Kids are stealing my pictures

CITA Photo · April 18, 2007

I take pictures at youth sporting events and the kids have discovered that if they add the pictures they want to the shopping cart and then choose adjust crop that when it goes into the page to adjust the crop they can right click and choose "save backrground as" and they will get a good copy of the picture saved on their hard drive which they later upload to mySpace. They don't even care about the watermark, and it is driving me crazy. I would like to find a way to disable the right click in that area so that this will stop. Any ideas would be welcome!

Andy · April 18, 2007

CITA Photo wrote:

I take pictures at youth sporting events and the kids have discovered that if they add the pictures they want to the shopping cart and then choose adjust crop that when it goes into the page to adjust the crop they can right click and choose "save backrground as" and they will get a good copy of the picture saved on their hard drive which they later upload to mySpace. They don't even care about the watermark, and it is driving me crazy. I would like to find a way to disable the right click in that area so that this will stop. Any ideas would be welcome!

{JT} has promised a way to protect this in the cart- sorry for the hassle

{JT} · April 18, 2007

I don't want to give away how - but adding a pop up warning when a user right clicks on the image to say "can't copy", will not stop them from getting the image eventually - although I can certainly add the feature to the page. Not that we will, but would you rather have your watermarked image on the crop page instead?

CITA Photo wrote:

I take pictures at youth sporting events and the kids have discovered that if they add the pictures they want to the shopping cart and then choose adjust crop that when it goes into the page to adjust the crop they can right click and choose "save backrground as" and they will get a good copy of the picture saved on their hard drive which they later upload to mySpace. They don't even care about the watermark, and it is driving me crazy. I would like to find a way to disable the right click in that area so that this will stop. Any ideas would be welcome!

CITA Photo · April 18, 2007

{JT} wrote:

I don't want to give away how - but adding a pop up warning when a user right clicks on the image to say "can't copy", will not stop them from getting the image eventually - although I can certainly add the feature to the page. Not that we will, but would you rather have your watermarked image on the crop page instead?

I understand that and I have the right click turned off everywhere else. The images on the crop page are watermarked but the quality is still plenty good enough, and the kids don't seem to care about the watermark. I was just hoping that the right click could be disabled on the crop page in the shopping cart area. I'd be more than happy to sell them a copy for cheap to put on their myspace, I'm just tired of giving it away for nothing.

Andy · April 20, 2007

CITA Photo wrote:

I understand that and I have the right click turned off everywhere else. The images on the crop page are watermarked but the quality is still plenty good enough, and the kids don't seem to care about the watermark. I was just hoping that the right click could be disabled on the crop page in the shopping cart area. I'd be more than happy to sell them a copy for cheap to put on their myspace, I'm just tired of giving it away for nothing.

The images in the cart cropping tool are now right click protected

Thanks {JT}

CITA Photo · April 24, 2007

Andy wrote:

The images in the cart cropping tool are now right click protected

Thanks {JT}

You guys are awesome! I am sure this will help me a lot!

Nikolai · April 24, 2007

CITA Photo wrote:

You guys are awesome! I am sure this will help me a lot!

I don't want to sound like a party pooper, but you *know* that once an image - any image - is displayed directly (as an < img > HTML object) in someone's browser it also means that it's stored in that machine's local cache, don't you?

Right click or not - it's already there, and with kids being pretty computer savvy these days, it will only take them 30 seconds or less to get the image from cache.
As they say in my home country, "locks only work with honest people" <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >

There are ways around that, too, but they would require some major overhaul on the SM side and can be hardly considered feasible...

Just don't want you to be blindfolded.

HTH

rosselliot · April 24, 2007

Nikolai wrote:

I don't want to sound like a party pooper, but you *know* that once an image - any image - is displayed directly (as an < img > HTML object) in someone's browser it also means that it's stored in that machine's local cache, don't you?

Right click or not - it's already there, and with kids being pretty computer savvy these days, it will only take them 30 seconds or less to get the image from cache.
As they say in my home country, "locks only works with honest people" <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >

There are ways around that, too, but they would require some major overhaul on the SM side and can be hardly considered feasible...

Just don't want you to be blindfolded.

HTH

and if that fails, all you gotta do is take a screen capture and that would be great for an avatar or profile picture, and probably a 4X6. that's why I get my money upfront, then anything from photo sales is extra, because a lot of high school students will just copy and paste them or save them somewhere and put them on myspace and/or facebook etc. well, at least the problem seems to be fixed now. thanks JT and Andy.

- RE

medallion · April 24, 2007

rosselliot wrote:

and if that fails, all you gotta do is take a screen capture and that would be great for an avatar or profile picture, and probably a 4X6. that's why I get my money upfront, then anything from photo sales is extra, because a lot of high school students will just copy and paste them or save them somewhere and put them on myspace and/or facebook etc. well, at least the problem seems to be fixed now. thanks JT and Andy.

- RE

Gee, Mary Poppins the world can be an ugly place. Reminds me of radar detectors.

encosion · May 31, 2007

As already suggested, you can make it harder, but there's always a way around it... Your best bet is thinking of it as free advertising... Re-think what your watermark says to harness this 'advertising' more effectively... Be smart, not brash! That and resign yourself to the pros and cons of being online...

2whlrcr · June 18, 2007

Just how easy is this for the computer literate, which I am not. I have installed all the locks and blocks on my account and thought I was protected.

I just hate putting a watermark accross the photo. If it's placed at the bottom, I imagine it can easily be cropped out of a stolen photo. And I'm sure there are those who don't care that the watermark is there.

Any solutions?

iamback · June 18, 2007

Nikolai wrote:

I don't want to sound like a party pooper, but you *know* that once an image - any image - is displayed directly (as an < img > HTML object) in someone's browser it also means that it's stored in that machine's local cache, don't you?

That depends - if the photo is served with HTTP headers telling the browser to not cache it, there's a fair chance it will be sitting only in RAM memory, but not found anywhere in the cache.

SM could add such HTTP headers to images being served, but whether that requires a major overhaul I can't tell - I don't know what their software is like or what web server they're running. All I'm saying is that it's technically possible to add such headers.

And yes, a screen capture would still be possible, though it may not be the optimal resolution. But for some applications just 800x600 or 800x800 is enough so with a large enough monitor it's easy to capture that.

aivan71 · June 19, 2007

iamback wrote:

SM could add such HTTP headers to images being served, but whether that requires a major overhaul I can't tell - I don't know what their software is like or what web server they're running. All I'm saying is that it's technically possible to add such headers.

Changing the HTTP headers in not really a major overhaul, but I'm pretty sure that will not happen anytime soon because that will take a big impact on SM's webserver and bandwidth. That'd mean that EVERYTIME a visitor browse a page, ALL the images in that page would have to be downloaded AGAIN. Now multiply that by the thousands of visitors times the millions of pictures. Just my 2 cents.

)

dogwood · June 19, 2007

iamback wrote:

And yes, a screen capture would still be possible, though it may not be the optimal resolution. But for some applications just 800x600 or 800x800 is enough so with a large enough monitor it's easy to capture that.

Yeah, for myspace, this is plenty.

Custom watermark is the "solution". People still grab them, but at least your name and website is on them when they do. You probably weren't going to sell to the folks who swipe 'em anyway-- but it's a bit of advertising or at least ownership declaration when they do.

devbobo · June 19, 2007

iamback wrote:

That depends - if the photo is served with HTTP headers telling the browser to not cache it, there's a fair chance it will be sitting only in RAM memory, but not found anywhere in the cache.

SM could add such HTTP headers to images being served, but whether that requires a major overhaul I can't tell - I don't know what their software is like or what web server they're running. All I'm saying is that it's technically possible to add such headers.

But that requires that all browser correctly observe that http header...my past experience is that it's not neccesarily the case.

sirsloop · June 19, 2007

Time to make a more obnoxious watermark

If you put your website URL on the photo as a watermark, then they will see it over and over and over every time they look at your work. If they post that photo to forums or something, other people may look at your website from that. At any rate, turn it around into free advertising. The people that steal these photos are likely friends with other people that may end up buying something.

Its impossible to prevent theft... so embrace it and turn it into something useful.

iamback · June 20, 2007

devbobo wrote:

But that requires that all browser correctly observe that http header...my past experience is that it's not neccesarily the case.

That's why I said "there's a fair chance".

I agree with aivan71 though that it would increase bandwidth for SM.

jfriend · June 20, 2007

Right-click protection only stops right-clicks

2whlrcr wrote:

Just how easy is this for the computer literate, which I am not. I have installed all the locks and blocks on my account and thought I was protected.

I just hate putting a watermark accross the photo. If it's placed at the bottom, I imagine it can easily be cropped out of a stolen photo. And I'm sure there are those who don't care that the watermark is there.

Any solutions?

I won't go into the details so as not to educate those that don't already know, but right-click protection only deters the non-computer savvy.

For anyone who knows how Smugmug works, it takes seconds to borrow any image on screen. For anyone who knows their browser, it just takes a few additional seconds beyond that. Neither of these techniques have anything to do with browser caches which is also another possibility. And, of course, you can always grab a screen shot too without knowing anything about the browser.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone because a piece of software (the browser) has to be able to read the HTML from your gallery page, parse it, end up with some IMG links which it then downloads the actual display images from. If a piece of software can do it in order to display your gallery, then you know it can be done in a pretty well documented and straightforward way. The right-click protection that Smugmug adds foils right-click or drag/drop, but that pretty much all it foils.

As has been said elsewhere in the thread, watermarks are a more effective deterrent. I see that you are using watermarks now. If I were you, I'd put a copyright message into the watermark with your business name rather than "proof image" because at least the copyright watermark looks to the thief and to their viewers like the image has been taken in an unauthorized fashion. The "proof image" leaves open the possibility that the thief is the one who put the proof image there rather than someone else. Proof image doesn't also prove to others that the images are yours, whereas your own copyright name is more likely to.

2whlrcr · June 22, 2007

jfriend wrote:

As has been said elsewhere in the thread, watermarks are a more effective deterrent. I see that you are using watermarks now. If I were you, I'd put a copyright message into the watermark with your business name rather than "proof image" because at least the copyright watermark looks to the thief and to their viewers like the image has been taken in an unauthorized fashion. The "proof image" leaves open the possibility that the thief is the one who put the proof image there rather than someone else. Proof image doesn't also prove to others that the images are yours, whereas your own copyright name is more likely to.

Thank you for the response. I've only just went back and readded the watermarks, after reading this thread and realized I'm not as protected as I thought I was.

I aggree I need to change the watermark to something more personal and professional with a copyright mention. But I also understand you can't technically use the term "copyright" without following proper legal steps?

Anyway, I'm just doing this as a hobby and testing the waters. If I discover more people are stealing the photos, instead of purchasing, I'll just stop shooting, except for myself.

sirsloop · June 22, 2007

2whlrcr wrote:

Anyway, I'm just doing this as a hobby and testing the waters. If I discover more people are stealing the photos, instead of purchasing, I'll just stop shooting, except for myself.

That would be a shame!! Don't let a bunch of punks with print screen buttons stop you!!

jfriend · June 22, 2007

2whlrcr wrote:

Thank you for the response. I've only just went back and readded the watermarks, after reading this thread and realized I'm not as protected as I thought I was.

I aggree I need to change the watermark to something more personal and professional with a copyright mention. But I also understand you can't technically use the term "copyright" without following proper legal steps?

Anyway, I'm just doing this as a hobby and testing the waters. If I discover more people are stealing the photos, instead of purchasing, I'll just stop shooting, except for myself.

What legal steps do you think must be done before you can put a copyright symbol on your images? I'm certainly not an expert on this, but I've never heard of that.

ivar · June 22, 2007

2whlrcr wrote:

I aggree I need to change the watermark to something more personal and professional with a copyright mention. But I also understand you can't technically use the term "copyright" without following proper legal steps?

I believe you can, but I think you are referring to this: (from this page)

How to Secure a Copyright
Copyright Secured Automatically upon Creation

The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See “Copyright Registration.”

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. “Copies” are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm. “Phonorecords” are material objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the “work”) can be fixed in sheet music (“copies”) or in phonograph disks (“phonorecords”), or both. If a work is prepared over a period of time, the part of the work that is fixed on a particular date constitutes the created work as of that date.

I Simonius · June 23, 2007

CITA Photo wrote:

I take pictures at youth sporting events and the kids have discovered that if ....<snip> I would like to find a way to disable the right click in that area so that this will stop. Any ideas would be welcome!

I don't know if this will work but you asked for ideas... and that's all it is .. an idea:

only display pics of kids "as thumbnails"

That way the biggest they have for a screencap of in browser cache is tiny

<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" > does it help???<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >

2whlrcr · June 23, 2007

Simon King wrote:

I don't know if this will work but you asked for ideas... and that's all it is .. an idea:

only display pics of kids "as thumbnails"

That way the biggest they have for a screencap of in browser cache is tiny

does it help???

If I was the customer, I would want to view a shot of something larger than a thumbnail, to evaluate whether I liked it or not?

iamback · June 25, 2007

jfriend wrote:

What legal steps do you think must be done before you can put a copyright symbol on your images? I'm certainly not an expert on this, but I've never heard of that.

No legal steps are necessary - you own what you created unless it was a "work for hire". That's regulated by an international convention which only a very few countries have not signed by now. Signatories to the convention can implement their own law but such laws cannot take away rights owners already have.

So if you own your own photographs, you can just apply a copyright statement to them. Note that a proper copyright statement should include the copyright symbol, the year (of creation or first publication) and the name of the copyright owner.

I Simonius · June 25, 2007

2whlrcr wrote:

If I was the customer, I would want to view a shot of something larger than a thumbnail, to evaluate whether I liked it or not?

Sure, of course but he knows these 'customers' are nicking his shots... so thumbnails only for them! ;-)

Actually the thumbs on some gallery styles are big enough to see and would do for those that are likely to stael them instead of buy

ashsimmonds · June 25, 2007

a nice effective watermark is best, the people who use your images are never going to pay, so let them advertise for free!

i like mine (for now), a nice little strong watermark down the bottom, with a couple light ones through the middle.

iamback · June 25, 2007

ashsimmonds wrote:

a nice effective watermark is best, the people who use your images are never going to pay, so let them advertise for free!

i like mine (for now), a nice little strong watermark down the bottom, with a couple light ones through the middle.

The ones in your samples look nice - but they're placed so they're all easily removed with a little photoshopping - or largely so as to make the remainder so hard to spot it would be good enough to use.

ashsimmonds · June 25, 2007

iamback wrote:

The ones in your samples look nice - but they're placed so they're all easily removed with a little photoshopping - or largely so as to make the remainder so hard to spot it would be good enough to use.

yeah i don't make any money out of this, i just like taking the pics. i give out the originals to the owners and let everyone else see these with the watermarks, mainly just so they can use them for themselves and hopefully have my pics spread out there on the internets.

ahh now my smugmug pics aren't loading

ashsimmonds · June 25, 2007

...and we're back.

some of the earlier watermarks i had were darker, but i wasn't really happy about sharing those photos as it came across kind of spammy rather than as a desire to share some pics.

dogwood · June 25, 2007

iamback wrote:

No legal steps are necessary - you own what you created unless it was a "work for hire".

Yup, this is true. The benefit to registering the copyright is that you can collect more monetary damages if it's infringed upon. But even without registering your copyright, you can still collect the market rate for use of that image. And if someone removes your copyright info then uses it, it's pretty hard for them to argue they didn't know it was your image.

I watermark differently based on the events I shoot. Some events get big ol' ugly tiled watermarks across the entire images-- these are the events where I'm pretty sure the photos will be swiped. Other events get a little more subtle watermark across the middle-- these are the events where people seem a little more honest and willing to buy.

Kids are stealing my pictures

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