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Post by genazzano on Aug 15, 2014 4:07:17 GMT -5
Unauthorized use of images is a common problem encountered by photographers who post their photos on the web. Recently, there have been improvements on methods to protect images that are posted on the Internet. In the past, I used Google's "Who stole my pictures?" to find sites that were using my images in violation of copyright. However, there were two drawbacks to the Google service: First, the images were found based upon similarities and not by any identifying code in the image file. Second, some sites simply ignored the notifications sent by Google and continued to use the images on their site (one photography site continues to use my image in violation of copyright). Few of us have any inclination to rush out and employ an attorney to initiate legal action and the thieves know this.
Simply tracking down sites that use images in violation of copyright isn't of much help. There should be a way to reach out and delete images on the web sites when images are found to have specific identifying code. Is this possible? ...and why not?
David Tomei
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Aug 15, 2014 5:38:38 GMT -5
Digimarc (http://www.digimarc.com/) is the standard service for watermarking images with your unique digital ID, and monitoring the web for any use of your marked images. The cheapest level is $49 a year (1000 images/year, no monitoring, just absolute proof the image is yours) and $99 a year (2000 images a year with monitoring). There might be others offering a similar service. This is real watermarking (invisibly embedded, not just your name written across the image).
I'm not sure about your other idea, the ability to delete images on other websites. Sounds like the hacker's dream. If you can do it, so can anyone else.
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Post by philbirch on Aug 15, 2014 13:11:47 GMT -5
Three ways to get redress:
If you can prove that the images are yours, then why not employ a lawyer? You can claim usage fees from the site, compensation, costs and they would have to pay your legal fees too. That'll really piss them off and they may think twice before doing it again.
Complaining to a national TV station or newspaper naming and shaming the company could produce results, nobody likes bad publicity. And it may benefit you in the long run.
Or employ a hacker and have their site destroyed. That'll teach the bastuds.
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truls
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Post by truls on Aug 15, 2014 13:40:44 GMT -5
This is a difficult topic to deal with. There must be an intermediate solution, the wish is publishing images and also fear of someone using them in unwanted ways. I haved tried to search for solutions, some says a watermark in the image will protect your ownership. A small unobtrusive watermark will be effective as the image gets somewhat distorted without loosing any purpose. Some more about watermarks.Other claim if one use images small in size, stealing small images are not worth in any usage. They fill their purpose but are like a teaser, no one can use them in any way. More tech tips protecting images.One can also combine several methods to increase a level of security. Sid has also a good suggestion, if this works in real life, it may even be worth paying for. Another method of creating ownership of images are digital signing. This is a foolproof way to ensure no one can claim that they own your image. The software is free and open source, get it here.It can look a bit intimidating at first, but it is only a few steps to install, you click next next and answer simple questions. If you have Win 8 or 8.1 the antivirus software must be deactivated during install. Activate it afterwards. From gnupg.org " A digital signature certifies and timestamps a document. If the document is subsequently modified in any way, a verification of the signature will fail. A digital signature can serve the same purpose as a hand-written signature with the additional benefit of being tamper-resistant." A digital key consists of a password of your choice, as long as no one get hold of that password, it is not possible to manipulate a digital signature. It ensures your ownership. The software is reputable and known not to be vulnerable in any way. When installed, it is most easy to digitally sign or encrypt data: Here, we are right clicking an image for digitally signing it. I will go through the process of creating a key as a reference. When installed, open "Kleopatra" which is found on the Desktop. Click File->New certificate Choose "Create a personal OpenPGP key pair" Enter your name and email address (you can also send encrypted/signed email, another story) enter a passphrase, easy to remember, hard to guess. Now move the mouse and tap on the keyboard, or ultimately start antivirus scanning. This activity will increase the cryptography. the key is created, congrats! You can see your new key here in Kleopatra control panel. Now you are ready to do as in the first picture, sign and encrypt data. I think this kind of copyright will be important in the future, documenting who is the owner of the image or document.
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daveh
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Post by daveh on Aug 16, 2014 4:46:31 GMT -5
Copyright is a strange being.
Unfortunately with the Internet it is relatively easy to pinch whatever anyone wants. If it's on the screen it can be stolen and will be stolen if someone has a need for it. I'm sure that however good a digital signature is, there will be a way to disable it. It might take more brain power to do it, but somebody will know a way to remove it (digitally that is - it's easy to take a photo of the screen and so remove all embedded digital information). The best that can be done is to make it as difficult as possible for the average would-be thief.
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Post by genazzano on Aug 16, 2014 5:05:36 GMT -5
Protecting your ownership of your images, whether as a professional photographer or just because you took one good picture in your life, is a fundamental right. It involves two aspects: first, establishment of ownership which has been described very well by Truls in the previous posting here. Second, enforcement and recovery of the rights to an image.
It is similar to recovery of art work stolen from owners by the Nazis from galleries, museums, governments and private collections, something in which I have some experience with regard to Franz Kochman. Proof of provenance is often not especially difficult. However, actual recovery of stolen pieces is time consuming, very expensive, and often impossible in practice.
Personally, proof of ownership has not been very challenging. In the past I have used various methods to prove ownership including some sophisticated digital "watermarking". I do not use these anymore because proof of ownership is not the limiting obstacle. The problem is one of enforcement. Threats of legal action against the owners of sites that illegally use an image are simply not compelling normally. In Italy, it would take decades to accomplish anything in the court system. In the USA, there isn't any good lawyer who would take on a case involving theft of an image and unauthorized use. Contingency fees are out of the question unless the image is immensely valuable. Loss of income or damages are also out of the question unless the photographer and rightful owner of an image is a successful and publicly recognized person. Publicly exposing the sites that use your images without authorization is very hazardous and in fact exposes the owner to legal action by the theives. The rightful owner of the image in question may find that he/she must pay high legal fees to defend against legal action by the people who have stolen the image in the first place.
In my opinion, the owner of an image should have the right to delete that image from the Internet. That means all copies of the image from all sites in which it appears.
Ciao!
David Tomei
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daveh
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Post by daveh on Aug 16, 2014 5:51:46 GMT -5
I completely agree with that.
One problem, coming up more and more, is with whom does the use of a photo rest? The way things are heading, the old days of the "the photographer has the copyright, unless signed away", are possibly disappearing. There are certainly noises about making revenge porn illegal, even when the photographer holds the copyright. Will that be the thin end of the wedge, and any photo that someone, anyone, finds an objection to, will have to removed from the internet?
In the end, it is the way of the world that some will chose to use other people's efforts to further themselves. Ultimately there is little that can be done about it. Some might say "how do they sleep at night?" The answer is "very well" as they don't see it as being wrong in the first place. It's human nature. Plus ça change.
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truls
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Post by truls on Aug 16, 2014 6:20:45 GMT -5
Copyright is a strange being. Unfortunately with the Internet it is relatively easy to pinch whatever anyone wants. If it's on the screen it can be stolen and will be stolen if someone has a need for it. I'm sure that however good a digital signature is, there will be a way to disable it. It might take more brain power to do it, but somebody will know a way to remove it (digitally that is - it's easy to take a photo of the screen and so remove all embedded digital information). The best that can be done is to make it as difficult as possible for the average would-be thief. Sorry Dave, but your claim is not correct. Reference site 1" It would take the combined processing power of every computer in the world thousands of years to crack 4096-bit encryption." Reference site 2" What if Big Brother has a massive cluster of supercomputers guessing keys at full power in a top secret and shadowy lab a mile beneath Maryland?” Even then, they still can’t crack your crypto." The famous informer Edward Snowden here explain how to keep NSA out of business. Reference site 3GPG is VERY secure, and keep your documents yours forever. Signing has the same secure benefit. Only way seems to keep images small in size to keep them from practical unwanted use. Hope others also will comment this, ask quastions, it is an important debate.
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Post by philbirch on Aug 16, 2014 6:37:40 GMT -5
Daveh pointed out about screen capture. That would render any protection, no matter how sophisticated, useless and the screencap could be itself digitally signed by the person doing it. You are never going to stop this.
Mine aren't good enough to steal, but then again I don't have that many images on the internet.
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Aug 16, 2014 7:28:16 GMT -5
You can get some protection by limiting the size of a photo you post to the web. The smaller it is, the more it has to be enlarged to be of any real use to anyone. You can also increase the amount of lossy compression, so that the photo is already severely degraded before anyone tries to enlarge it. I've always posted with photos sized to 500px largest dimension, and JPEG compression level 5. I'm seriously considering going down to 400px and level 4.
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truls
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Post by truls on Aug 16, 2014 8:33:35 GMT -5
You can get some protection by limiting the size of a photo you post to the web. The smaller it is, the more it has to be enlarged to be of any real use to anyone. You can also increase the amount of lossy compression, so that the photo is already severely degraded before anyone tries to enlarge it. I've always posted with photos sized to 500px largest dimension, and JPEG compression level 5. I'm seriously considering going down to 400px and level 4. I tend to go with your solution. Images gets published, but are hardly worth using in any other way. Phil: I was a point inaccurate, it was dave'd statement about signing images/documents I was referring to. Screen grabs are however hardly worth stealing. In that case one should not publish an image in the first place. Digitally signed images are a mean to state true ownership.
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daveh
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Post by daveh on Aug 16, 2014 8:45:37 GMT -5
Someone on another photographic forum posted, on a website, photos which he felt were safe from copy. I sent him a full size copy whatever size it was, 3000x2000pixels or thereabouts. Presumably, if you of a mind to, and have the ability you can get to and copy the original file. I did screen copy of (overlapping) parts of the image then reassembled using photoshop.
As Sid says, using small dimensions is an answer but then bona fide viewers only get a glimpse, and sometimes a poor glimpse, of what the picture should look like. To be honest I take photos for myself and whoever they were intended for. If someone else wants to download one I'm not too bothered. If I have a photo that I really don't want anyone to misuse then I don't put it anywhere on the internet. The last couple of years I have helped a friend cover the local school pantomime. He does mainly video: I do mainly stills. I do not put any of the photos of the children anywhere near the internet, which is shame because some are quite presentable (both the photos and the children!)
Down at the local cricket club several years ago there was an attempted break-in. The main door was too secure -solid door, several locks. The thieves tried to pull an entire window frame out. By this time the alarm was operating so the thieves never completed their task. If only they had tried one of the other doors. Whoever locked up had forgotten about it and the thieves could have walked straight in. Any system is only as good as it's weakest point.
I do't really believe these claims of invincibility in systems. I recall the USA claiming their spy satellites could pick up a person and even see if he or she was smoking. Transfer that brag to the real world and they couldn't find what Sadam Hussein had done with his weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure many of the government departments, financial institutions and such like have been set up with unbreakable systems. The trouble is many have been breached. Obviously no one is going to expend as much energy to nick something that isn't worth much or has little interest to people at large. It is that that keeps most of our work secure.
There is, of course, the old-fashioned break-in to steal whatever. How many of us have our computers and drives fully secure from theft?
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daveh
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Post by daveh on Aug 16, 2014 8:56:19 GMT -5
Truls, my point is that if you photograph the screen you completely lose all previous digital information. What is visible to the eye is in analogue form and that is what the camera is taking. Any digital signature is lost, no matter how well encrypted it is. is it worth doing? Probably not, but that isn't the point.
The other conundrum is that because something has one person's digital signature it does not necessarily mean that person is the owner of the copyright.
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truls
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Post by truls on Aug 16, 2014 12:02:56 GMT -5
Dave, I mostly agree with your statements. But I do not think because we use computers, our data is available to everyone. That is not a fact. In case of burglery I have encrypted my computer, dumb thieves are not able to read the contents, nor any government including the police. I have an offline backup outside my home, also encrypted, stored outside my house.
Encryption or securing data is not very hard today, most people are not aware of this, until the need arise.
Say you copied my image from screen, how could you claim it is yours? Your grabbed image will be dated after the original, without any digital signature, quality would be lower etc. Today it exists meters who can state what camera sensor the image came from. I think you would have a bad day in court! However, if I do not have signed my image digitally, ownership could be harder to prove.
You have right about a digital signature could be someone elses work, it also reminds me how important it is to secure all data.
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Post by genazzano on Aug 16, 2014 13:27:58 GMT -5
How about instead of small and good images, big and really bad. I've decided to post only bad images. ....oK, no smart ass comments.
Ciao!
David
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