I'm doing some work on my website and one suggestion has been to add a hidden copyright watermark to any image on the site. Creating this is not a process I'm familiar with so I thought I'd run it by NPN for ideas.
While I only use low-res jpegs(72-96 dpi) her thought was that the images could still be stolen by graphic artists for use. I'm not sure how valid this thinking is but it does seem to hold a bit of water.
Rob - Anything displayed on your screen can be captured simply by hitting the print screen button and pasting into a photo editor. So if you don't have a visible watermark, it won't be there if the screen is captured. That's why the suggestion is to do something visible to the image.
David,
Thanks for the input. It would seem though that if they are able to get it to say Photoshop then the copyright could pretty easily be removed which makes it a moot point. Of course we are only talking about those with less than standard morals, someone with respect for the arts would probably ask first - in the first place.
If you post images on the internet you cannot prevent anyone who wants to from taking the image. For all the preventive safeguards I've seen discussed I think I know at least one countermeasure to get around each one of them. So, accept this as part of life on the internet.
Do what you can to brand your images:
1. place your copyright notice on the image itself so that anyone who steals it cannot claim they didn't know it belonged to you. Yes, they can clone it our in photoshop, but that will just give their lawyer something more to try to explain when you sue them.
2. put your name, copyright, web site address, etc. in the EXIF for each image and do not strip out the EXIF when you post the image (commonly done by "save for web"). Yes, anyone who steals the image can delete EXIF data as well, but not all image thieves know or look for it.
3. be diligent. Review your web stats to see if you can detect any suspicious activity (like deep linking).
4. do regular google web searches for your name and web site address (it is easy to set these up as automatic google alerts).
5. learn your rights covered in the Digital Millennia Copyright Act (DMCA). It took about an hour for a web site using three of my images without authorization to have the page taken down after I alerted the host site about the infringement of the DCMA.
6. if you find someone has actually stolen a valuable image then get a lawyer who specializes in this, like Carolyn Wright. I have never contacted her but have seen reports from satisfied users on this and other image sites.
You can also use tineye which is a free image search engine which uses image identification technology to locate similar images to see if you can find stolen images. It sure would be nice if there was a file format you could use that would display without a watermark normally but would display a watermark when a screen capture was attempted or a person attempted to copy the image.
I'm guessing the 'hidden' watermark is referring to digimarc. The plug-in puts a hidden copyright in the image that can to a certain extent withstand jpg compression save/re-save. But, it doesn't prevent - only acts as a tag to find. Richard mentioned some good methods.
With regards to tineye, its nice but their database is currently less than comprehensive (although I have high hopes). It also doesn't allow you to detect unauthorized image use in other formats.
Austin, what you suggest can be done via java script, but as with any trick like this can be overcome very easily.
Discussion
5 repliesWhile I only use low-res jpegs(72-96 dpi) her thought was that the images could still be stolen by graphic artists for use. I'm not sure how valid this thinking is but it does seem to hold a bit of water.
Also, as far as "low res" goes, please see this thread on dpi.
Thanks for the input. It would seem though that if they are able to get it to say Photoshop then the copyright could pretty easily be removed which makes it a moot point. Of course we are only talking about those with less than standard morals, someone with respect for the arts would probably ask first - in the first place.
Do what you can to brand your images:
1. place your copyright notice on the image itself so that anyone who steals it cannot claim they didn't know it belonged to you. Yes, they can clone it our in photoshop, but that will just give their lawyer something more to try to explain when you sue them.
2. put your name, copyright, web site address, etc. in the EXIF for each image and do not strip out the EXIF when you post the image (commonly done by "save for web"). Yes, anyone who steals the image can delete EXIF data as well, but not all image thieves know or look for it.
3. be diligent. Review your web stats to see if you can detect any suspicious activity (like deep linking).
4. do regular google web searches for your name and web site address (it is easy to set these up as automatic google alerts).
5. learn your rights covered in the Digital Millennia Copyright Act (DMCA). It took about an hour for a web site using three of my images without authorization to have the page taken down after I alerted the host site about the infringement of the DCMA.
6. if you find someone has actually stolen a valuable image then get a lawyer who specializes in this, like Carolyn Wright. I have never contacted her but have seen reports from satisfied users on this and other image sites.
With regards to tineye, its nice but their database is currently less than comprehensive (although I have high hopes). It also doesn't allow you to detect unauthorized image use in other formats.
Austin, what you suggest can be done via java script, but as with any trick like this can be overcome very easily.