Protecting images from downloading.

[Kirk Keyes]

Just say (in a high, girlish voice), "Swiper, NO swiping, Swiper, NO swiping!"

(Sorry, I've got a 2 year old and we watch a lot of Dora the Explorer...)

[nanuq]

Moose Peterson uses the flash technique on his blog. The result is that it shows poorly on my rss reader, so I had to manually check his website every time. It quickly became a pain and I removed said blog entirely from my feeds. I think there's a moral here.

My point is: if you want images to be seen, then use technologies that allow people to see them, and not ones that make it difficult to do so.

[Michael Chmilar]

As Jeremy and Paul have said, the Flash approach adds a trivial level of protection (easily defeated), and likely causes the target audience to roll their eyes and click the "close" button to flee from an annoying website.

[Big Fish]

Gentleman...

Again, thanks for your input. I believe that for the project specfic venture I will use the user-password approach as I my market target is very select will be able to notify them first. With respect to my own work I will be setting up regular web gallery.

Many thanks.

Big Fish

[ic-racer]

In aweb hosted photo gallery how do you prevent your images from being downloaded

Remove the images.
When a web browser loads you page, if the images are visible to the viewer, they have been 'downloaded' to that computer.

[Gary Miller]

Hi All,

This subject has fascinated me for a long time because I hope to have a website of my work one day and was also concerned about web piracy.

In my research on the subject I came across some good information. While surfing the web I came across a site called: www.pixiport.com where they have photo art for viewing and sale. While you may "right click" and save a thumbnail, when you click the thumbnail to view larger and right click on it, you are presented with a box that says "copyright notice" and a message that says "this site is not public domain and may not be used without permission. Please contact the artist for permission."

You can follow the link below and try right clicking to see the box.

http://www.pixiport.com/Photo-month-P1-39.htm

They also have a nice article about, "Protecting Your Images Online".

http://www.pixiport.com/Gallery-W14-12.htm

Another good piece of software I discoverd and plan to purchase is from www.Antssoft.com and called "HTML Protector". You can read about it on their site.

http://www.antssoft.com/htmlprotector/index.htm

Hope this may be of some help.

Gary Miller

[Brian Vuillemenot]

Just make the images so low-res that they are only usable on the web or as a postage stamp size enlargment. I dealt with this very issue a couple months ago:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ad.php?t=41314

The irony is that the only reason I found that they were using my image without authorization is that my name came up on a Yahoo search at this site since it was mentioned on the website. Had they simply left my name out, I wouldn't have found it. Who knows how many other sites may have ripped off my images...

[Brian_A]

So what you're saying is, is don't bother going after anyone who steals from you if it's a small thing? That's just retarded. It's an ethics issue why you go after someone who illegally uses your images. Do I not put my images up? Absolutely not. I'm willing to take a risk. Although, should I find somebody illegally using my image you'd better bet that they're going to get an invoice. And if that's not paid up they'll get a letter from my IP lawyer.

Case in point, a fellow student in a business class posted some shots of a old abandoned building. He had his name and copyright in the bottom right hand corner of said image. A few months later, his roommate was playing an X Box game and saw an image that really looked familiar. He called the photographer friend in to look at it. It was the image, cropped to remove his name and copyright along with them Photoshop'ing it to make it look a little more eerie. The judge wasn't so happy that they intentionally cut out the copyright and never tried to get ahold of the photographer. So, your name could easily be cut out. The only way to get past that is to watermark it right through the center, which makes the image unappealing in my opinion. (Not saying I haven't done it...)

With all due respect, to just brush it off and not do anything about it because they can't make a 16x20 out of it is just irrationally stupid. That's the same as another thread recently on here about giving your work away to magazines or books for free or near free because they're doing you a favor by advertising your work. You work hard for your money and to say not to go after people illegally using your image - however small it may be - is just irresponsible.

[Charles Carstensen]

Brian, I don't think anyone is saying don't bother. This all relative to who you are, who the thief is. and IF you have REGISTERED your copyright. If you want to be moralistic (meaning non businesslike) it is best to have really deep pockets and a lot of extra time. Flash and other so called protection schemes only serve to slow down the protector. I still say publish only low res under 6-7 hundred pixels. Registering with the CO simply cannot be overstated. Do anything to keep away from involving lawyers.

[Tony Lakin]

Hi
I have a photo library of images at www.isleofmanphotolibrary.com
the pages have been created in Photoshop and then run through a program I think called HTML Page protector which disables the right click save thing and is supposed to scramble the html, I don,t know how effective this is and am sure that it is no problem to the 'technofreeks' and the image files are very low res. however I would be intersted to know how easy or difficult it is to download them, anyone prepared to give it a go and let me know here or by PM I promise not to sue for copyright infringement.
Thanks