Protection of our images

Is there any way the adminstrators at phot.net can disable the right

click function to better protect our images from being lifted? I

recently found one of my images used commercially with my copyright

cropped off and have since resorted to watermarking them across the

center which in my opinion, and that of those who are rating them,

ruins the image itself.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

-Norman Perkel

There are serveral threads on this subject already. The gist of them is that disabling the right click is nonsense. Yes it is possible but it does nothing but instill a completely false sense of security. Any site doing this is run by admins who (1) realize that it is useless but do it anyway to pull the wool over their members' eyes that they are doing something about security; or (2) don't realize that it is useless, meaning they are clueless. Since I'm not in either of these groups, we don't disable the right mouse menu.

Any suggestions on how I can better protect my images from being lifted? I am really new to this and was shocked to see my photo being used commercially.

Register your copyright with the Copyright Office, so that if someone is commercially using your images you will be entitled to statutory damages. If your copyright is not registered, then you can recover only your actual damages, assuming you can prove actual damages, which is not easy.

Thanks Brian. Is there anything technical you would suggest such as watermarking?

You can find famous photographers, big name commercial photographers, and widely published photographers who don't see the need to do this with their images. It's true that they can be lifted, but given the low resolution of the images, the only use someone could find would be on the web. That's a risk plenty of photographers are willing to take.

Last year, someone lifted one of my images and put it on a CD cover. Not exactly for major market distribution, but the point is that you'd be surprised what some people will do with a 432 X 576 compressed jpeg.

I wonder what percent of the right clickers have given much thought to copyright issues. We've had lots of posts on this forum that make it clear that they think it's harmless or are even doing us a favor. I get the sense that if we made it clear that we were willing to go to a bit of trouble to make it harder for the average user to upload an image, most of the casual abuse would disappear.

 

Maybe those are the ones we don't really care about. In the case above, it was a nonprofit who thought I wouldn't mind. At my insistence, he did pay me the nominal fee I asked for, but the whole incident wouldn't have happened if we had had right click disabled.

 

Another solution is to suggest smaller uploads.

Well, I'd be seriously pleased if someone liked my image enough to pirate it!<div></div>

7/7

Actually, I find the thumbs up slightly soft and centered. LOL :P

Hi Carl, you wrote "...but the whole incident wouldn't have happened if we had had right click disabled...". I can't say whether it would or wouldn't have happened but disabling right click would not have made it any more difficult to get the image. When an image is displayed in a window, a simple Alt-PrintScrn (on a PC anyway) will copy the contents of that window to the clipboard. From there the clipboard copy can be pasted into any drawing program.

The idea isn't to make uploading impossible, but rather to disable the first thing they're likely to try. It's an in-your-face surprise that makes your feelings quite clear. A copyright notice does the same thing, except that people don't bother to read it or think about what it means. . . . and it's not interactive.

I'm with Brian (and others above) on the whole right clicking issue. Since this is a site for sharing and learning about photography, it is important be able to easily copy, edit, and re-post someone's photo to illustrate editing suggestions.

 

Recently someone told me that one of my photos had been "pirated" by a website in Germany. I wrote to the website to ask why they took the image without permission, but got no response. I guess I should be flattered. Here's the link: http://www.toyn.de/

Could there be a piracy warning, that comes up across the screen, when you right click, warning of the penalties involved if the photograph is used for comercial use, and that if they wish to use the photograph, they need to contact the copyright owner, and to proceed, they would have to agree to not to use the photograph without permission, would something like this be possible?

 

I know this wouldn't diswaid everyone who right clicks, but it may help with those who claimed they didn't think the owner would mind, and it would still allow those here on P.net, that want to help the photographer with say color levels and such, to show or illistrate their comments on the photo.

"I know this wouldn't diswaid everyone who right clicks"

 

The word is "dissuade"...

 

( To deter (a person) from a course of action or a purpose by persuasion or exhortation )

 

What this site REALLY needs is a spell checker

 

(sigh)<div></div>

Well EXCUSE ME Harvey!

 

And yes, your right, I would love a spell checker on here, spelling was never one of my strong points, but ask me to do any math equation! ;o)

<em>What this site REALLY needs is a spell checker </em>

<p>

Google "ieSpell"

Hey Cool, Thanks Bob!

 

I gots me a new spell ckecher!