Comments on: 10+ Ways To Protect Images From Being Stolen

By: Aphradonis Synexious

Aphradonis Synexious — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 04:49:01 +0000

This is a humorously out of touch article I found after I wondered if anyone had written an article about the ridiculousness of Flickr allowing the “disabling” of image downloading, when screengrab programs, which are *impossible* to block, allow any image to captured in seconds. It is not possible to make image capturing even remotely hard. Lol.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:00:22 +0000

I know this is an older article, but I hate to say it, but image theft is actually a positive thing. Why do you think Terry Richardson, high paid fashion photographer, has large size images on his tumblr with no protection? Because he doesn’t care. Go ahead, download them, and try to use them and watch what happens. Lawyers are now hoping and praying someone will steal images, rather than photographers trying to prevent it. You can spend so much time trying to prevent image theft and chasing people down in the Ukraine, etc. who will never honour your take down request anyway. Or, you can just let people take it. Why do you care if some kid uses your work as a wallpaper? No magazine or publisher in their right mind was use a 72dpi 1280px image from Tumblr because the quality is too low, and they would have lawyers on them for 150,000 USD per image if they made the mistake of using it. What I’m trying to say is….ignore the small fry kids who share and repost your image. Let them, who knows, you may turn them on to photography. Only go after the big frys, the TMZs, the newspapers, etc. Otherwise you are wasting your time.

By: The Mule

The Mule — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:02:29 +0000

Most of these suggestions are useless and easily defeated. And none of them are foolproof. No matter what you do – NO MATTER WHAT, someone can take your image if they can see it. You could do every single trick on this page and I can still go to your site and take a screenshot, then trim the image I want out of that.

Better off either a) changing the way you think about copyright and ownership, and/or b) stop putting images you don’t want publicly available in a public place.

By: Minh Le

Minh Le — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:22:12 +0000

Awesome! The copyright thieves almost destroy all my hope to start up a photography blog. Then u light me up again
Thank you so much <3 <3

By: Graham Matthews

Graham Matthews — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:58:49 +0000

I found out that a lot of my artworks have been stolen… and I can see them on other sites just by using image search on Google… but they were lower resolution, with my name on them. So, at least I get credit.

By: Sundevildaddy

Sundevildaddy — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:06:45 +0000

Something to consider:
Though it *is* impossible to fully protect your works/art/photos/etc on the web, there are good reasons to take steps to make it harder.
Example: There are average only 13% of web users who take the time to learn the tricks or know how to rip media files that are “Protected”(statistical reference).
That means that, average, 87% of your visitors will do as you intend, visit your site and view your media as you have it.
For the other 13%, if you have media which you did not create (own copyright to) posted, you are required, by copyright law, to have not only a reference (web link, wording, etc) to the origin of that media, but you must reasonable effort to protect the copyright owners media. If those reasonable efforts are not made, the copyright owner (person who took the photo,made the pic/song/”media”) can include You, along with whoever have download/ripped the media, in any lawsuit of copyright infringement. They can also place you as being held for higher financial responsibility/jail time than those who ripped, because you facilitated the breech of copyright (by placing it on your website).
Just a heads up.
Great Post
~Sun
*Source- USPTO & retained Copyright Lawyer

By: An Peters

An Peters — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:36:29 +0000

Watermerk works best!

An Peters

By: Erika

Erika — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:32:54 +0000

I know my horse show images are on every rider’s Ipod, even though they are watermarked. With the IPod and IPad, pinch to enlarge the shot to crop out the watermark, press two buttons simultaneously and it copies any photo. And even though I now have my watermark diagonally across the shots, riders don’t care – the shot can clearly be seen behind the watermark. The only solution is to pass out cards at an event, post one great shot as an example, and a few partial shot teasers, and make people come to you to see your photos. If you are good enough, they will come. If not, they were likely the ones ripping off your shots in the first place.

By: Gitta

Gitta — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:06:58 +0000

Thank you, good ideas and tips. I’m just starting making “better” pictures so this is very useful. Still like @Taylor’s post. If somebody uses my photo with a backlink so I get some credit, the better.

By: Taylor

Taylor — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:06:04 +0000

well as a confessed photo junkie, I collect photos from all over the internet for my personal use. I have a tumblr where I repost pics i like when I find them but link back as best I can. so that the author gets some free traffic. but truely, with a frew tools and the right browser set up there is absolutely no way to even slow me down. flash is annoying,yes. but can be worked around easily…
best point made, if you dont want people downloading it, dont display it online. period.