Yet Another Cycling Forum
Random Musings => Gallery => Phototalk => Topic started by: andyoxon on 07 May, 2008, 02:18:37 pm
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Just wondering to what extent people bother about protecting copyright of online accessible photos? Generally do you:
Not bother at all.
Use a separate private folder for originals?
Only upload 1024 size images for public albums?
‘Name stamp’ the original/all images?
Something else..?
Andy
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I upload only limited-size images - mainly to save online storage space, but also to disuade nickage. The full-size versions stay on my hard drive.
Name stamps or watermarks spoil your photos, I think.
Copyright is automatic, though you can reinforce the message if you like with a notice, eg. "(c) Bill Bloggs 2008".
Pbase allows you to add a copyright notice at the bottom of each of your images in addition to a title and caption.
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Most pictures I upload only at 700 wide. So they can hardly be used in print. Those who wish the large ones have to contact me and ask. When used for cycling purposes (for my cycling pictures), esperanto purposes (esperanto pictures) or left wing politics (political pictures) I'm happy to provide them without charge.
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I do not bother at all. If anyone wants to use any of my photos, I'd be flattered.
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I usually don't bother but I usually go upto 800px x 600px, anything else is private. Personal photos are of course inaccessible.
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IANAL, but as far as I'm aware, sticking a copyright notice on the bottom of a photo makes absolutely no difference to the legality of serving or hosting an image on the interweb....
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IANAL, but as far as I'm aware, sticking a copyright notice on the bottom of a photo makes absolutely no difference to the legality of serving or hosting an image on the interweb....
Yes, copyright is automatic. You don't need to post a notice, but a notice reminds people that images are copyrighted and might disuade some from nicking them.
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I do not bother at all. If anyone wants to use any of my photos, I'd be flattered.
Me to, although the only place I've ever seen one of my photos is on the site of someone from around here... <fx: looks pointedly at Mr Larrington>
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Personally I prefer people not to be able to download my originals, assuming anyone would be bothered about doing so. ;) The internet seems a bit of a free for all, and if someone can exploit something for nothing they will somewhere. I agree that, unless the site is a purely commercial operation, a name plastered on the photos detracts.
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There's nothing stopping any individual grabbing a bunch of photos and sticking their own copyright notice on them. Or even 'shopping out the original notice and putting on their own before plastering them back all over t'internet.
In most cases, it can never be resolved:
"That's my photo!"
"No it's not! It's mine!"
"No it's mine!"
etc. etc. etc.
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I upload my photos at 640x480. Google doesn't seem to index this forum (or ACF) properly, so my images don't appear on google. I check my web server logs regularly for access. I'm not bothered if people take my images, just if they take my bandwidth.
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AFAIA 640x480 would
barely not produce an acceptable 6x4 print, so I agree, cutting down the original minimises the risk of someone exploiting your images without permission. I'm not bothered about displaying cut down images either; though I really prefer to see something a bit bigger than this on a photo site.
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AFAIA 640x480 would barely not produce an acceptable 6x4 print, so I agree, cutting down the original minimises the risk of someone exploiting your images without permission. I'm not bothered about displaying cut down images either; though I really prefer to see something a bit bigger than this on a photo site.
I've had acceptable 10x7 photos off 864x1152. I'd guess that if someone wants to steal your photos they wouldn't be exceptionally bothered about quality.
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I'm not too bothered if anyone uses a photo of mine - except if they make money out of it - and that's more likely with a large image as they are more useful commercially. If they're going to make money then I want some of it too.
My photos aren't really good or attractive enough for this to be an issue (yet), but I'd like to think they might be one day. An exception was a picture nicked from an eBay listing of mine by another eBayer selling a similar item at the same time. I objected and got his listing cancelled because it was unfair competition (and also misleading and confusing to buyers).
I agree that a name on the photos detracts (and looks poncy). The copyright notice I mentioned is just text separate from the image. I might make people think twice, that's all.
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I agree that a name on the photos detracts (and looks poncy).
Hmmm...
A nice script typeface for your name, then surround the photo with a glorious faux-gilt embossed frame.
That's what the 'mercans do. I'll bet they get bugger all photos stolen!
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There are tools available on the internet which enable you to embed an invisible watermark in your image. Won't stop someone nicking it, but at least you can prove your ownership if someone does nick it. It is virtually impossible for anyone to tamper with the image in such a way as to remove the watermark, short of destroying the image entirely.
One such service is available as a plug-in to Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc. It used to be a free service but now, it seems, you have to pay a subscription. See here (http://www.digimarc.com/register/). Might be worth it if your copyright is of value to you.
It is supplied as a demo with Paint Shop Pro. The demo version cannot be personalised, it merely embeds the words "Jasc Watermark Demo", so it's no use for protecting my copyright! But it illustrates the principle. Since my metier is astronomy stuff, here are two almost identical images of the same star cluster, one with watermark, one without. See if you can tell any difference.
(http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/167/m1518aug07006rrpj1.jpg) (http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/1043/m1518aug07006rwfh1.jpg)
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Does the watermark still work if I take a screenshot of the image?
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I just tried that, and so long as I cropped the image, yes PSP still found the watermark. It also found it if I resized the image to double sized, or applied the Automatic Photo Enhancement. I suspect that in part this is dependent on what mode your screen is in, if you were using 8 bit colour, you may that it destroys the watermark.
On the other hand, making it half it's original sized destroyed the watermark, as did resizing it to 105% of it's original size.
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My take on this is that the internet is a free-for-all, like it or not. Obviously that does pose problems with all sorts of intellectual property, but on the whole the benefits (eg open source) far outweigh the drawbacks (eg copyright torn to ribbons).
Attempting to establish copyright on online photos is just pissing in the wind, IMO.
That said, without even trying I've sold a few photos over the last few years, to people, usually journalists, who've seen a small web version and need the original for publication purposes. One made the front cover of a weekly magazine a couple of years ago. It wouldn't have happened without the www, because I don't make any attempt to promote my photos for sale.
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Nuts magazine has notoriously taken several b3ta contributors' work and printed it. Sometimes they paid a fee after being prodded, but at first they were just swiping the stuff. Some of this stuff takes a lot more work than a simple photo, however -ahem- puerile the subject material.
Some of the b3ta source material is really lo-res, but Nuts is not a high-quality publication; they just want something amusing to fill the gaps between the tits, bums and supercars.
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I just tried that, and so long as I cropped the image, yes PSP still found the watermark. It also found it if I resized the image to double sized, or applied the Automatic Photo Enhancement. I suspect that in part this is dependent on what mode your screen is in, if you were using 8 bit colour, you may that it destroys the watermark.
On the other hand, making it half it's original sized destroyed the watermark, as did resizing it to 105% of it's original size.
Maybe the system is not as secure as claimed (I've never watermarked anything myself, I'm not bothered about my own stuff)! It works by adding systematic coded 'noise' to the image - minor fluctuations in brightness and colour, too slight to be noticeable to the eye, but detectable by software. The tool offers a slider allowing you to set the degree of 'strength' of the watermarking: I think I had it set about mid-point. Presumably 'stronger' means noisier and more likely to be visible to the eye. :)
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Without looking at it in detail, I'd guess it's doing something like Stego, although it must be more complex than that, since a simple Stego-d code would be lost even if you used a simple rescaling by an integer factor (which didn't appear to be the case with this).
Of course, rescaling by non-integer values is very likely to screw up any coding scheme. If you really want to make it difficult for someone to recover a watermark, then resize preferably by a odd value like 101%, modify the brightness/contrast (possibly modify different colour channels), and apply a noise removal filter. There's little chance many hidden coding schemes will survive that very intact, but it'll also bugger up the image quality!
Any scheme which does survive that sort of manipulation is also likely to be fairly obvious in the original image.