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Protection of posted pictures against theft.


farnz

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Andreas,

 

A member of the forum (I would like to think innocently and naively) copied all of the pictures posted by members in the 101 pages of the 'I Love My MP' thread, pasted them into a presentation and posted the presentation on another website where the photos could be purchased. The misguided motive appeared to be to celebrate the wonderful collection of photos in the thread. There was no permission sought from members and therefore none given, none of the photos were credited to their owners, and the proceeds from the sales presumably went into the member in question's bank account.

 

My point in raising this issue is not so much to highlight the member's foolishness but to ask whether the forum's software can in some way protect members' photos from copying/theft? For example, I recall some websites where the right-click function is disabled, which at least prevents casual viewers from copying and stealing photos although I accept that it wouldn't prevent experienced or determined thieves.

 

I suspect that the answer will regrettably be "no" but I felt it important to at least ask the question.

 

Pete.

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The user in question has had his fortune told and is suitably contrite over what he did out of ignorance. As far as I am concerned that matter is closed, but it does not mean that someone else won't try to steal or use member's images without permission.

 

Disabling the right click option is the least effective way of preventing theft. Watermarking or Digimarc won't stop a determined thief.

 

Don't post any images here that have commercial or personal value if you don't want to risk theft or unauthorised use. Tracking software such as tineye is useful for low volume users, whilst Picscout is a professional platform.

Edited by pop
Removed the user's name
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Regrettably, the answer is "no".

Really: Even offhand, I could name a number of measures which would make it harder to rip images off web pages. As has been pointed out, for every measure there are one or more countermeasures.

To be sure, such measures would make the copying of images too difficult and/or too cumbersome for many people. The incident at hand most likely would not have occurred had there been even quite symbolic measures in place.

However.

Members do sometimes download and modify pictures to illustrate some points. That would stop if it became too difficult. People find it difficult to post pictures even now.

Some measures require member's browsers to be equipped with some additional software, usually called "players" or some such. Such players have been known not to be bug free and to compromise the security of the computers they are installed on. Some members might access the forum from computers where they can not install any additional software.

Those measures might demand more computing power on the server and/or the client computer and they might cause the site not to work with certain systems such as elderly or mobile computers.
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[schmal......

Members do sometimes download and modify pictures to illustrate some points....

[/schmal]

 

That in itself is another issue. I have seen numerous examples of people 'modifying' images posted in the galleries without asking permission from the author first.

 

I think permission should be sought out of courtesy, even though most image owners seem not to be too bothered. If not already, maybe Admin could consider applying this as a forum rule.

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There was a long discussion amongst members years ago about whether shots should be seen as fair game for others to edit, or whether permission should be sought. I don't think that any particular conclusion was drawn, other than if one is happy for any shots submitted to be edited, this can be made known via a signature entry.

 

Hardly anyone has made such a statement.

 

I don't post many shots in the photo section any more, but I don't particularly mind if people thnk that they can improve on my shots. I do object to anyone using my shots for any purpose outside of the forum, without asking my permission, even if it is just a shot of a camera I happen to own.

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The only real defense is to make the quality of the shot so low that no decent use can be made. However, this is at odds with the desire to show it to the other members in its full (well, dumbed down to jpeg small) glory.

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Thanks for all the replies and, as I mentioned, I expected that protection is still not practicable although who knows what's available through ongoing software updates so I think it was a question worth asking.

 

Pete.

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Thanks for all the replies and, as I mentioned, I expected that protection is still not practicable although who knows what's available through ongoing software updates so I think it was a question worth asking

 

Pete, the problem is that all the images are shown at 100% magnification, so they can always be copied by a simple screenshot, regardless of any measures in place to stop them being copied.

 

The only thing that would go part way to protecting them that I can think of would be if you had to be a forum member to see the full sized images, that would at least prevent a non-member gaining access to them, but I think that's already in place.

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Digital images are ephemeral and it's ridiculous to pretend that they are special works of art. If it's posted anywhere on the web somebody somewhere will nick it.

 

A massive non issue - just go out and make some more pictures and move on.

As the OP, I never referred to the images as "special works of art"; that is your exaggeration and not a little patronising.

 

The photographs I make belong to me whether they have any intrinsic value or not and just because someone is able to steal them without my having any way of stopping them does not mean I should have to just accept it.

 

Pete.

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The problem is that it is simply stealing. The value, intrinsic or otherwise, is irrelevant. I - and many others- object to theft. Unwittingly taking them and trying to rectify matters as happened and was the motive for this thread may be condoned - but that is about the limit of my tolerance.

Edited by jaapv
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This is part of the first post within this thread, which clearly shows the TO's concerns and preferences:

... to ask whether the forum's software can in some way protect members' photos from copying/theft? For example, I recall some websites where the right-click function is disabled, which at least prevents casual viewers from copying and stealing photos although I accept that it wouldn't prevent experienced or determined thieves. ...


I think the question makes it quite clear that Pete wants us and himself to be able to show photographs in this forum and that he wants to know whether it is possible to make the theft of those photographs a little bit more difficult than it is now. He also explicitly refers to the fact that there would be no absolute protection of the images.

In this sense, I don't think your following reply adds anything which the TO did not state in his question. Nevertheless, thank you for telling us your opinion.

Simple solution - If you don't want pictures to be stolen then DON'T post them online.

If you do post a picture then you have to accept that IT WILL be stolen. Not condoning this but this is how things are. ..

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MAY be stolen rather than WILL surely.

 

MIGHT be stolen. :)

 

Use might when the likelihood is low. Also use might when speaking in the past tense. Each seems to apply to what Paul wrote.

 

Pedantically yours,

pico

Edited by pico
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