anyone else tired of stolen photo's? new watermark idea?

j-bo

Seems that more and more of my photo's are getting ripped and posted on myspace and mymotospace....how CHEAP are these kids? I only charge $3. I suppose it could be argued, how CHEAP am I, arguing over 50 photo's or so, that wouldn't be bought anyways and some see it as FREE advertising, I don't go for that train of thought.

I've emailed myspace, "reported" the photo's and nothing ever gets done, and those are the only few that I happen to see. mymotospace says.. he'll take them off, but they get put right back up and he can't keep doing that all day for anyone..anyone have any idears? :dunno

I'd love to put a new watermark up, but I doubt they'd care and would just rip'em anyways. I even tiled my watermark this last go around, they didn't care bout that either. It also seems , I dunno the word for it ______.

IF YOU SEE THIS, THIS PHOTO IS STOLEN!

Tile that huh? :rofl

saurora

I imagine that watermark would be stolen just for the "fun" of it! At least attach your web-site address so you get some free advertising out of it!

Mac Swenson

I think that people are always going to steal your photos, so your best bet is probably going to be put your site on the water mark like saurora said. But maybe make your water make bigger, adn move it to the middle of the photo so that you cant crop or cut it out. And disable right clicking as well. Its not going to stop 100% of all thefts, but at least it will deter most people.

bham

You need to keep on the people at myspace and mymotospace. I bet in their agreement to use the site it says something about violations of the rules could have their use removed and them banned from the site. Usually one violations warning from the sites about possible removal. Keep on them. One by one they will learn. Its work, but you can either do it or live with it. At this time these are the only possibilities unless you want to try and take the individual to small claims court, not sure if you could I am not a lawyer.

Angelo

how are they being stolen? can you stop them at the gate?

you have an extensive statement regarding copyright infringement on your home page which includes a statement of ownership by motoximages.com, but my understanding of the law is that copyright can only be held by a legal entity and your website may not qualify. A legal entity is a person or a corporation.

you may want to seek legal advice / clarification of this.

DoctorIt

If you're using all the protection provided by a smugmug account (I'm assuming you have one). The best they can do is steal a small screenshot with the watermark on it, then crop it away leaving a very low quality nasty image. If that's good enough for their crappy myspace accounts, there's not much more you can do.

I go with Saurora, put your web address on it and at least get free advertising out of the little buggers.

My only worry for you is, you'll never stop those kind of screenshot nabs from kids on myspace. But if you focus only on them, and get carried away with the watermark, you might turn away legitimate customers who will miss how good a photo is by trying to decipher an overbearing watermark. Make sense?

Angelo

DoctorIt wrote:

If you're using all the protection provided by a smugmug account (I'm assuming you have one). The best they can do is steal a small screenshot with the watermark on it, then crop it away leaving a very low quality nasty image. If that's good enough for their crappy myspace accounts, there's not much more you can do.

I go with Saurora, put your web address on it and at least get free advertising out of the little buggers.

My only worry for you is, you'll never stop those kind of screenshot nabs from kids on myspace. But if you focus only on them, and get carried away with the watermark, you might turn away legitimate customers who will miss how good a photo is by trying to decipher an overbearing watermark. Make sense?

unfortunately software like this is out there: http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.asp

gus

Angelo wrote:

unfortunately software like this is out there: http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.asp

Angelo is that something different to simply hitting print screen & pasting into paint ?

DoctorIt

gus wrote:

Angelo is that something different to simply hitting print screen & pasting into paint ?

If it is, I don't see how. Maybe just better resolution? The built-in screen cap for most OS's is very limited resolution, I think 72 dpi or less.

Angelo

gus wrote:

Angelo is that something different to simply hitting print screen & pasting into paint ?

Not sure Gus, just another insidious program I know is out there. I think it probably helps enhance images "snagged" from a website.

cmason

Angelo wrote:

Not sure Gus, just another insidious program I know is out there. I think it probably helps enhance images "snagged" from a website.

Huh? Snag it is a great program, I use it nearly everyday, It is a screengrab utility, that gives you options to grab the screen or a portion of it etc. Since I work in software industry, getting screengrabs of applications is critical. Can you use it to grab photos? Uh, sure, guess so. You can use PrintScreen in Windows OS for that too, and a similar function in Mac.

Jim Halpert

cmason wrote:

Huh? Snag it is a great program, I use it nearly everyday, It is a screengrab utility, that gives you options to grab the screen or a portion of it etc. Since I work in software industry, getting screengrabs of applications is critical. Can you use it to grab photos? Uh, sure, guess so. You can use PrintScreen in Windows OS for that too, and a similar function in Mac.

Agreed.

SnagIt is great. I use it every day as well. The ability to capture the entire contents of a scrolling window as an image... priceless! Try that with [Alt]+[PrtScrn]

Angelo

OK, OK, OK, let's not allow this to denegrade into a offense/defense thread about one particular piece of software.

I don't know much about SnagIt or it's value to folks doing your work... I'm just saying any program or utility that helps anyone steal intellectual property, skirting copyright, is a threat to all of us.

cmason

Angelo wrote:

OK, OK, OK, let's not allow this to denegrade into a offense/defense thread about one particular piece of software.

I don't know much about SnagIt or it's value to folks doing your work... I'm just saying any program or utility that helps anyone steal intellectual property, skirting copyright, is a threat to all of us.

Angelo, the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems allow anyone to steal photos in this manner.

xtnomad

My New Rude WM
I have now moved up a level and shot road racers on track day events. I have learned that most of these guys and gals are pros. in other professsions and most are IT people and would realize that i am just trying to protect my work as they might do themselves. My sales increased with this type of event and hope that the ones that do buy my photos can see enought of the image to make a choice to buy or not. I will see how the next few events go and plan to put this logo on some t-shirts so everyone knows who the rude photog is at the events. Those that understand will and those that do not will complain.


At the very least i am not affraid to display large veiws.

DoctorIt

Angelo wrote:

OK, OK, OK, let's not allow this to denegrade into a offense/defense thread about one particular piece of software.

well, it's your fault!

I don't know much about SnagIt or it's value to folks doing your work... I'm just saying any program or utility that helps anyone steal intellectual property, skirting copyright, is a threat to all of us.

See, now I'm confused. It's a screen grab... if I can see something with my own eyes on my computer screen, and just save it as an image. Is that theft? Well, I don't think so. As much as I would dislike them, if they're not making money from an image (obviously), I would defend them to the death that they can display any image they found on the web, freely.

Which brings us back to the matter at hand. The original poster is legitmately upset that he's losing business to what I percieve as a few cheap kids posting low res screengrabs of his photos. Well, to be blunt and get us back on track: I don't think those kids are doing anything other than being cheap. I actually don't consider that stealing. And as I pointed out before, by getting too crazy with a watermark and focusing on the cheap customers who will never buy from you anyway, you're wasting your time.

That is of course if screengrabs are all they're getting... if they have somehow hacked their way into larger files, that is of course, outright stealing. But as I also pointed out, there are protective measures in place at Smugmug, and I'm sure other hosting sites that work quite well.

MichaelKirk

Are you searching myspace,ect for your photos?
I'm curious how you found your images in the first place. The internet is so vast that would seem like finding a needle in a haystack. I would not even know where to begin to look to see if any of my photos are floating around "OUT THERE"

Michael

j-bo wrote:

Seems that more and more of my photo's are getting ripped and posted on myspace and mymotospace....how CHEAP are these kids? I only charge $3. I suppose it could be argued, how CHEAP am I, arguing over 50 photo's or so, that wouldn't be bought anyways and some see it as FREE advertising, I don't go for that train of thought.

I've emailed myspace, "reported" the photo's and nothing ever gets done, and those are the only few that I happen to see. mymotospace says.. he'll take them off, but they get put right back up and he can't keep doing that all day for anyone..anyone have any idears?

I'd love to put a new watermark up, but I doubt they'd care and would just rip'em anyways. I even tiled my watermark this last go around, they didn't care bout that either. It also seems , I dunno the word for it ______.

IF YOU SEE THIS, THIS PHOTO IS STOLEN!

Tile that huh?

xtnomad

In my case the people I shot are a small group and post in forums just like us. Then one day before a event I was looking at that forum to see who might be there and i clicked on a myspace signature and There my photos were with water mark and large. :cry

Mac Swenson

I have seen the same thing as well, and to an extent I could care less if they want to use a thumb nail on their 'My Space' as they can't print it, and it just looks bad with a decent watermark, so it usualy won't be exciting to them for that long. And I have yet to have a teenager buy a print. It's almost exclusivly parents and relatives.

xtnomad

Mac Swenson wrote:

I have seen the same thing as well, and to an extent I could care less if they want to use a thumb nail on their 'My Space' as they can't print it, and it just looks bad with a decent watermark, so it usualy won't be exciting to them for that long. And I have yet to have a teenager buy a print. It's almost exclusivly parents and relatives.

It really depends on how you want to market your self. If you dont care, the orignal post is from some one that cares. I care. I only show up at an event to sell and with the sales of digital photo equipment in the point and shot, my biggest compition is the person that gives his photos away just to be popular and see thier photo reviews of the peoples gradifacation only. With my investment in equipment and skill i can out do this compitition with quiality, but as a consumer it is hard to compete againist FREE.

Mac Swenson

I fully understand where you are comming from and that it's annoying, but its not something im wiling to get hung up on. I have invested many thousands of dollars into my equipment, and I hate when i am under-cut by some person with a P&S, or a entry level dslr on fully automatic, but in all honesty, if i feel they are my competition, then I need to start practicing, because your avrage parent isn't going to come away with anything other than a decent portrait while the action is stopped.

j-bo

I have smugmug and have done all the protection they offer. I even stopped showing the larges as all you have to do is .... well I'm sure we all know how to get around right click protection. I have my watermark tiled now, but they still grab the medium size pix. I agree, an obnoxious watermark would possibly drive out regular, honest potential customers. I even struggled with tiling it, but it didn't seem to bother anyone.

The reason I find them on myspace/mymotospace is we have a very large mx forum. Everyone in our mx commmunity goes there and thats where I market my photo's from. My friend 1st told me about another photog's copyrighted/watermarked photo's were all over myspace,etc. He then told me he sees a lot of mine too, so I decided to take a look see for myself.

Maybe I am over bearingly upset about it all. But... to me.. they are doing this to all the photog's in our area and it ticks me off. As far as "is it stealing?" Well in my eyes it is. Is it an insignificant amount, surely, but it just bugs me.

I've read this and it has great info on the myths of copyright:

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

I have a lawyer friend. She advised me to go through the hoops that myspace and mymotospace make you do to point out where you "think" copyright infringement takes place on their site. I'll be sending in all the paperwork today. Of course, for all those that set their profiles to "private", we are out of luck on.

Guess I'll get over it in a while. I'd like to make a post on our mx forum, but how to do it in a nice enough manner where others don't see it as me being all about the buck, etc.

DoctorIt

j-bo wrote:

Maybe I am over bearingly upset about it all. But... to me.. they are doing this to all the photog's in our area and it ticks me off. As far as "is it stealing?" Well in my eyes it is. Is it an insignificant amount, surely, but it just bugs me.

It sucks, for sure. But if it helps you deal with it all, while it may infringe, just view it as I said before: these cheap bastards probably wouldn't buy stuff anyway. So are you losing or are you just upset that you're not gaining? I guess that's all I'm saying, just to try and relieve your stress - unfortunately, it's a no-win battle for you - referring to this "crowd" only.

Saddest part is that it's your own mx community. If I were you, I would definitely make several posts there. No inflammatory comments, but simply pointing out: "hey we're a community, I thought I was offering you guys a service... what gives?"

JimM

Just as frustrating, I have had a parent purchase a 4x6, then the kids, scan it and post it. Although at least they purchased something (but no watermark this way).

j-bo

Just upset that they ask to get them taken, they comment on how great the photo's are, then they take them.

I'm trying to figure out a nice post to put up, just as you stated below. I guess being new at all this has it moments of frustrations.
Thanks for commenting and making me feel a bit better about it.

DoctorIt wrote:

So are you losing or are you just upset that you're not gaining? I guess that's all I'm saying, just to try and relieve your stress - unfortunately, it's a no-win battle for you - referring to this "crowd" only.

Saddest part is that it's your own mx community. If I were you, I would definitely make several posts there. No inflammatory comments, but simply pointing out: "hey we're a community, I thought I was offering you guys a service... what gives?"