VA Based Photographer Dealing With Interantional Thief

[jowensphoto]

The original photo was good! Good enough to steal. Theft of on-line images is very,very common. If an image is posted on-line, and it's a decent image, it WILL BE stolen. It might not make it to a tee shirt sold through an exclusive club in Russia...but it might very well end up in a brochure in Malaysia, or a pamphlet in Caracas, or on the side of a bus in Hartfordshire.

Trust me, this is not something I'm unfamiliar with.

https://www.google.com/search?tbs=s...u5q8J6k-MFbrKRtD-itCuA&hl=en&bih=830&biw=1664

Look familiar?

These are by far the worst offenders:
BlackBerry ♥╝ ÍÈßó ÇäÊó ÔãÓ ¡ äÂÓíå ÇáÛÑæÄÈ ╚♥ - ãäÊÏíÇÊ Úíæä ÇáÈÍÑíä
http://msh2wer.tumblr.com/
ÑãÒíÇÊ æÎáÝíÇÊ bb ÍÕÑíÉ ÈÇ ÈáÇß ÈíÑí ÇáÚÑÈ - ãäÊÏíÇÊ ÈáÇß ÈíÑí ÇáÚÑÈ Blackberry 4 arab

 

[jowensphoto]

Eff me.

So I used Google translate on a few of those pages. Not only has that image been watermarked, it's also being sold as a mobile phone wallpaper with someone's, who is not myself, watermark on it.

 

[amolitor]

Yeah, but think of all the EXPOSURE you're getting!

 

[jowensphoto]

Yeah, but think of all the EXPOSURE you're getting!

Ba dumb bum PSH!

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

Copyrights don't work. I think they're ugly and distract from the image anyway, so I don't use them.

But just to show you how easy it is, I took this into photoshop cs5 and removed the watermark with a simple lasso selection and a very small amount of cloning. I spent literally 30 seconds getting rid of it. Took more time to resize the canvas so you could see the images stacked.

 

[palkin]

That's despicable. He should have put a watermark or something though to prevent this.

True but watermarks can be almost as easily removed as they are applied to a photo

I don't personally see how to do it "easily" but that's my limited photo editing experience talking. I'm sure there are better ways to protect your photo's though. The point is, he should have done more to prevent this.

In Photoshop the bandaid tool does it in 2 seconds. Very useful, but very sad when it comes to photography theft. Plus you can do screencaptures in Flickr images which are supposedly protected. Which is rather sad

 

[shefjr]

It really bothers me and makes me feel violated for you. I don't produce anything of great quality yet but, I hope to someday have a couple photos that I could hang and be proud of. I would be enraged if I saw someone benefiting or claiming my photo as their own all from a photo that I was able to produce. It makes me not want to share the photos that I take now and they are mediocre at best. WTH!!! That sucks!

 

[KmH]

In Photoshop the 'band aid tool', is officially known as the Spot Healing Brush Tool.
Used in Content-Aware mode the Spot Healing Brush Tool is very handy for removing a variety of things from an image.

 

[Greiver]

True but watermarks can be almost as easily removed as they are applied to a photo

I don't personally see how to do it "easily" but that's my limited photo editing experience talking. I'm sure there are better ways to protect your photo's though. The point is, he should have done more to prevent this.

In Photoshop the bandaid tool does it in 2 seconds. Very useful, but very sad when it comes to photography theft. Plus you can do screencaptures in Flickr images which are supposedly protected. Which is rather sad

Sad indeed that people are so talentless they have to resort to this

 

[Greiver]

So I just tried it out and while it's definitely quick and easy to use I'm guessing it's not as easy to master cause it just looks kind of blurred and the colors are mixed up and it doesn't look at that convincing to me.

 

[o hey tyler]

I think there is there is a script that can be applied to your website to prevent images from being downloaded or lifted.

There is, and when you come across that script all you need to do is open your resource manager and view the direct links to all the images both full size and thumbnail size.

 

[amolitor]

You can, with more effort, force people to forge referrer headers as well to get to you image. Your web site management interface may have a "prevent hotlinking" feature you can turn on.

That's another low wall, however. It requires a trifle more effort to hop over.

 

[lesliemorris85]

This is one of those photography issues that keep rearing its ugly head. I’ve had several friends who have been victimized by online theft and sadly, there’s apparently not much we can do about it, or even if there were the hassle might make the effort not worth it.

 

[KmH]

You want to hear sad. According to professional photographer association surveys, fewer than 5% of US professional photographers make the effort (or know how) to register their copyrights so they have a legal foundation on which to even pursue a thief.

It's little wonder online image theft is so rampant.

 

[Pukka312]

The original photo was good! Good enough to steal. Theft of on-line images is very,very common. If an image is posted on-line, and it's a decent image, it WILL BE stolen. It might not make it to a tee shirt sold through an exclusive club in Russia...but it might very well end up in a brochure in Malaysia, or a pamphlet in Caracas, or on the side of a bus in Hartfordshire.

I agree with this 100%! In Tanzania, it seems a lot of businesses get images from the web...some may purchase stock photos, but I'm willing to bet many do not. I believe most people here aren't even aware of copyright laws. And the ones that are, but choose to take an image anyway probably feel so far removed in Tanzania, it's probably safe to agree they most likely will never be found out. I've seen billboards, brochures, and magazine ads here that I'm certain are from the web (though I suspect the billboard ones have to be purchased just to have a high enough file resolution)

I actually have a massively obstructive logo on my photos here for that reason, including a partially transparent logo bar that spans the image.. If someone really wants to take the effort to steal my photo, I make them work for it. Unless they just crop the image smaller I guess. I get more nervous that people will lift my images from TPF because I drop the massive logo for you guys.