Picture Stealing...

[impactaway]

I have a website with pictures with my business, however my coworkers are taking my pictures and using them for their websites. I was wondering if there was a way to fix this other than a no right click code. I didnt know if there was a generater for the www.ebaumsworld.com thing on the bottom of their pictures that I could possibly use to end this stealing...

Thanks,
jb

[Dark Nova]

oh ya you can put a "copy right" on it

[colecifer]

there is always the print screen option nothing you can do about that.

[peekaboo]

Originally Posted by Dark Nova oh ya you can put a "copy right" on it

do you mean typing on the pic itself or is there a copyright function?

[kram 2.0]

Put this in between your body tags.

PHP Code:

<script language=JavaScript>
<!--

//By Maximus (maximus@nsimail.com) w/ mods by Dynamic Drive
//I give you, the reason why you can't access this source code! Muhahahaha!!!!

var message="Your alert message here";
var title="Ha"

function clickIE4(){
if (event.button==2){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}

function clickNS4(e){
if (document.layers||document.getElementById&&!document.all){
if (e.which==2||e.which==3){
alert (message);
return false;
}
}
}

if (document.layers){
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
document.onmousedown=clickNS4;
}
else if (document.all&&!document.getElementById){
document.onmousedown=clickIE4
}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("alert(message);return false")

//-->
</script> 


kram

[Force Flow]

Once little trick I've seen used is make a table for each image, set the image as the cell background, then insert a transparent gif (aka a 1x1 "spacer"), and set the width and height in html to match the width and height of the origional images. This usually discourages simple right click> save as.

[kevinf]

or maybe you can put a watermark on your images

[mairving]

I have never seen one that was effective. The no right-click ones are easily defeated. If these are people that you work with, why don't you ask them to stop?

[impactaway]

Originally Posted by kevinf or maybe you can put a watermark on your images

yeah, I was wondering about that... how would i go about doing this? Would I have to do each individual picture or is there some software generator?

[impactaway]

Originally Posted by mairving I have never seen one that was effective. The no right-click ones are easily defeated. If these are people that you work with, why don't you ask them to stop?

I am paid on commission and ppl i work with are sleezeballs

[hartken]

I would use ImageMagik to resize all images to a smaller resolution so they can't really be altered. You can also watermark the larger ones with ImageMagik so that they have your logo across the whole picture and are unusable, and put your logo in the lower right corner so at least they will spend more time editing them, and they will have to chop off part of it on their site.

You can use PHP to do everything, and ImageMagik is a really good program that all Linux distros have. This will save you a lot of time so you don't have to edit each one individual, and also it will save on bandwidth and make page loads faster.

[Jaggannath]

Ask them, after copyrighting the images you use. If they use them, tell them they're infringeing on copyright, and that you'll take action to protect your intellectual property

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by mairving I have never seen one that was effective. The no right-click ones are easily defeated. If these are people that you work with, why don't you ask them to stop?

Nothing is perfect. Having some layer of protection is better than working with nothing.

kram

[mairving]

Originally Posted by kram 2.0 Nothing is perfect. Having some layer of protection is better than working with nothing. kram

No mention was ever made of perfection. I merely mentioned the fact that a person that was savvy, which it seems like the users that are stealing the images are, then trying to protect them is ineffective. Sometimes trying to protect the images with a wimpy no-right click script is worse since it makes it into a competition to get the images.

It might help in knowing what kind of images these are. Best advice is to keep them small and have a copyright banner on them to make it a bit more difficult to use out of the box.

[Statica]

As mairving said, it is going to help by knowing what kind of images these are. Are they part of your website interface? Are they images that you are trying to sell .. etc etc.
If they are part of the website interface, then you might have little choice than using clever splits and annoying copyright messages in different places... or using flash to display your interface... which is part of what comes below.
If your displaying these images exclusively..
How about using your images from within a proprietary 3rd party application than simply using the standard web formats. The problem with JPGs etc is that even if you split it up and use tables or whatever, it's really simple to reconstitute them. Again, only you can evaluate what your primary revenue stream is and how much you are willing to do to inconvenience a leecher - we all know that it is virtually impossible to secure them absolutely, your primary goal here is to inconvenience them. Remember also, that some of this inconvenience is going to be shared by your regular visitor as well .. so you need to evaluate whether your clients are loyal enough, or your work is worthwhile enough for them to view your images from behind a 3rd party downloaded applet?
The most common such utility that comes to mind is to use Flash to display your images. Yes it's routine enough to find s/w that will reconstitute a .fla file from even a copyprotected .swf file .. but it does inconvenience them. There are other, more proprietary applications that you can google out.

[faulkner132]

I've "consulted" several photographers about this. There is nothing you can do to stop someone who wants to get your pictures... if they can't right click and download, they can view the source, etc.

There are really only 2 options:
1. Pictures you display are stored at a very low resolution so if they do download it, it isn't the best quality. I don't like this option as it makes your pictures look bad.
2. Watermark. This is the best option in my opinion. I've written several PHP scripts which superimposed a translucent PNG on top of a JPG which says "copyright" or whatever. This shows how good your pictures look but if they download it, it has "copyright" on it... no way they can get around it.

[barch 88]

Originally Posted by mairving I have never seen one that was effective. The no right-click ones are easily defeated. If these are people that you work with, why don't you ask them to stop?

True, they could just take a screenshot, cut, copy, paste.

[Jaggannath]

Watermarking was what I was about to suggest, that's the best solution I've seen out there