[thelist] Staving Off Photo Thieves

[the head lemur]

Short Answer: You Can't.

Long Answer:

The nature of the web makes any sort of protection scheme an exercise in
futility. Web browsers are convenient and extraordinary copy machines. If I
access a site with images, my computer has a copy, period. It is in the
cache. Depending on the browser will determine how hard it is to retreive
and what it's temporary name is, but it is now in my possession.

I have a number of clients who have products that I photograph and publish
on the web. I average about 50 digital photos a week for clients, which
means that I take a lot of digital images.

I save the raw image, and the webimage on my harddrive, zipdisks and
depending on the client burn the images and sites on CD's. They also go in
the client file as they are billed.

I have had not only images, but entire sites stolen. Most of the thieves I
have encountered have not even bothered to change the name of the images.
Too much like work I guess.

If you want to keep any sort of image virginal, keep it off the web. Failing
that and it is not an option for most of us, the best you can hope for is to
have your client fasttrack the images with the copyright folks in the
country of origin.

As has been discussed Digimarcing is a valid option.

Digimarcing is a very good methodology for producing an image trail for
litigation. This is only a solution if your client wants to spend a lot of
time in court suing for infringement, and is going to pay your expenses as
you sit in court waiting to give testimony as to origination, manipulation,
publication and demonstration that it is the clients image.

Yes you will sit in the halls of justice as the defense attorney would be an
idiot not cross examine you to attempt impeach your testimony and to create
enough doubt for a hung jury.

Other methods of "protection" such as scripting, etc. require large amounts
of work and concerns about accessibility, compatibility, download speeds and
ultimately are doomed to failure because they are viewable in a browser
window and are now mine:)

Your involvement in this should be limited by the scope of your contract.
I do work for hire, so that at the end of the day, with the check in my hand
the content belongs to the client, as well as policing the web for stolen
images and content. I am not spending hours at altavista using
link:myimagename.xxx to see where images I have repurposed for the web have
ended up.
Although, if the client wants this service, it is billable.

Website design is not pushing pixels around the screen anymore. Making a
website and uploading it, becomes a publication and has copyright conferred
immediately.  In the US and the countries that are signatories to the Berne
Convention, as the creator of the image, you hold the Copyright. How you
assign subsidiary rights as the copyright holder is a question that needs to
be addressed by you regarding your work. There are a lot of ways to assign,
sell, and retain these rights.

It is in the best interest of all of us to understand these issues, inform
our clients and move on.