Photos keep getting stolen!

[Paul Carmel]

Hi all,

How can I stop others nicking my photos? I just found another site with 3 of mine on it

[debk]

what kind of sites? personal or paid listing sites?

how did you find out??
debk

[Paul Carmel]

I found them on a rather bad holiday lettings agency site, We still a few round here the going rate is 30% of the gross income

[debk]

How about writing directly to the listing site? I'm sure you'll do better with a little time to think/edit but here's a grumpy start:

Dear -

I am writing to notify you that your website, via the listing below, is in violation of my website copyright.

http://www.linktotheirpagewithyourstolenfotos.com

I am sure that you understand the importance of protecting our internet assets and ask that you remove my copyrighted material from your site within X (x) business days.

You can verify the origins of these photographs by visiting our site (www.yoursite.com) as well as the following archived pages (www.whateverthatarchivesitemaybe.com).

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards,
Little Red Riding Hood

[Paul Carmel]

They are based in Calvi, and I know who they are, so a visit will be in order. Its more how I stop others in the future, I am sure there is a way that I can stop them physically lifting them from our site.

[debk]

Oh, yes, technically you can keep people from copying text and/or images... but I don't know how. Sorry for the confusion on my side!
debk

[Normandy Cow]

I have never "stolen" a photo for commercial purposes, but there have been a couple of times when I have wanted to copy/paste a photo for my own personal use and there has been some sort of way that the website owner has blocked it so you can't do it.

So I then just hit the PrtScr key - this copies the whole screen into the clipboard, and I then paste it into Photoshop and crop out the photo I wanted to copy...

So I don't think that there is any way that you can truly protect any images on the web.

[Fraise]

Wow Catherine, didn't even know I HAD a prt scr key but now I've found it I am going to play with it,bye for a while whilst I go off to play
ps- I've seen piccies with little symbols on them-how do they do that? I sent some of mine to a listing site to be used in their ad for my property and when they appeared they had the sites symbols on them. Another site I am with took photos themselves of my house but I had to ask permission to use them and they had to send them to me ( digitally) as I couldn't just "lift " them from the site as they were protected in some way.

www.thepetitmanoir.com

[e-richard]

...I've seen piccies with little symbols on them-how do they do that? ...

You need something like PaintShop Pro or PhotoStudio to do that. Its quite easy to just add another "layer" of text on top of the picture and maybe make it a bit transparent. Then when you save as a jpg file it will collapse all layers and the text is indelibly fixed into the picture.

But do you really want to do that ? I think it spoils the pictures

Some people put the copyright text very small in a corner, but then its easy for the "thief" to crop the picture to omit the copyright notice. One way or another there isn't much one can do, other than complain after the event.

[AndyLucia]

I have never "stolen" a photo for commercial purposes, but there have been a couple of times when I have wanted to copy/paste a photo for my own personal use and there has been some sort of way that the website owner has blocked it so you can't do it.

So I then just hit the PrtScr key - this copies the whole screen into the clipboard, and I then paste it into Photoshop and crop out the photo I wanted to copy...

So I don't think that there is any way that you can truly protect any images on the web.

At the insistence of Da Boss I've added script to stop right-clicks etc, it seems to keep her happy.

But on a couple of occasions I've needed to copy one of the pictures when I've been at another PC, so all I do is save the webpage to my desktop and take the relevant piccie from the folder neatly containing all the nice images!!

[maria-g]

Hi Paul,

If your images are on web pages available to the public, it is not possible to protect them because there are so many different ways to copy them. Ways to copy include and as mentioned above

* Disabling "no-right-click" and other scripts by setting the browser security to "High".
* Capturing the entire screen by pressing Alt+PrintScrn.
* Finding the image files in the temporary internet files (cache) folder.
* Saving the entire page including the image files by selecting the browser File menu and choosing Save As.
* Importing your entire web site into FrontPage or another web editor.

You can make it hard for the thieves to copy your image, by;

1. making the images less desirable by reducing the size
2. apply a watermark.
3. Or do the following. If you have designed your own website or know the coding, try to create a text file named norightclick.js with this inside:

Code: Select all

if (window.Event) 
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEUP); 

function nocontextmenu() 
{ 
event.cancelBubble = true 
event.returnValue = false; 

return false; 
} 

function norightclick(e) 
{ 
if (window.Event) 
{ 
if (e.which == 2 || e.which == 3) 
return false; 
} 
else 
if (event.button == 2 || event.button == 3) 
{ 
event.cancelBubble = true 
event.returnValue = false; 
return false; 
} 

} 
if (document.layers) { 
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN); 
} 
document.oncontextmenu = nocontextmenu; 
document.onmousedown = norightclick; 
document.onmouseup = norightclick;

Put it in your htdocs directory along with your html pages.

Add this anywhere in the <head> section of all your webpages with image:

Code: Select all

<script type="text/javascript" src="norightclick.js"></script>

This will stop Internet Explorer (86% of all users) from using the right-click menu without any pop-up or other silly stuff.

Also, to stop that IE save image tool from displaying, add this to the <head> section of all webpages:

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">

As for the "save as" and FrontPage, MSOffice, et al capturing your webpages, put this in your .htaccess:

Code: Select all

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule \.ida - [F]
RewriteRule \_vti\_ - [F]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Microsoft.(BITS|Data|URL|Office) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (frontpage|MSIECrawler) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

As I have said you will not effectively stop determined image thieves - only the amateur webpage builders.

[Fraise]

Wow, and I've only just met my "prt scr " key

[Martha]

I'd just stick my two pennorth in here by saying that I find all these things monumentally irritating as a customer, and I wonder if it's worth the potential losing of business because someone couldn't get the pic to put in their folder?

As everyone has said, if someone really wants them, they'll get them....irritating though it is. If you can go round there, result! Red faces for them, I'd imagine...

[Jimbo]

Firebug wrote:

As everyone has said, if someone really wants them, they'll get them

Edmund Burke wrote:

All that's needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing

Everyone doesn't say that - and it's not true. If it were, the stock photography, motion picture and popular music industries would have collapsed by now. However, one thing's for sure, if you don't do anything they'll certainly get them - and be back for more on your site and others. Copyright abuse is a growing international crime and one that should be combated by everybody whenever it occurs.

Recent threads on this forum have shown that, where site owners take the fight to the thieves, they often succeed. If you can't be bothered to fight, then you're letting down your fellow owners who struggle on your behalf as well as their own.

Jim

[Martha]

Well I think everyone does say that actually!
(in this particular case, anyway)

Without actually impeding the image (via watermark), you cannot absolutely prevent someone taking it. If you can see it on the screen, you can copy it.

But in this case, you have to weigh up the potential cost to you of someone *not* being able to save the picture or send it on to a friend, against the relatively small problem of the photos being taken.

Of course you should intervene if someone has taken your photos or text, it's infuriating and illegal - but in general you can get them removed fairly quickly, and I couldn't agree more with you that you should do that.

I certainly wouldn't suggest doing nothing about it - but I would just beware of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" so to speak

Everyone's individual situation and feelings are different, but mine is that the inconvenience to customers is not worth the chance of copyright theft. It's interesting to see everyone's opinions though

Most stock image sites make low resolution photos available which are easily big enough for online use - they rely on spotting them if they are used, and I think this is the best way forward....

A good compromise is perhaps to put a small watermark in the corner of the pic so that its source is clearly marked - this is also a benefit for legitimate users as it reminds them where the pic came from.

Incidentally several friends of mine have had entire sites stolen! One of them only found out because the thief knew enough to change the text, but not enough to change the code for the email link, so she got all his business enquiries

(In each of these cases, a cease and desist has done the trick quickly..)