Copyright

[geoff murray]

I have recieved a request from someone to use some of my images from PBASE in a website.I would like anyone with experience of copywrite to advise what (if anything) I should do to protect my future interests.Dont worry, I hear you all cry..they are not worth protecting,and you may be right,but it would be nice to know.

[geoff murray]

please ignore this I have found the answer on PBASE forum

[slejhamer]

Geoff, please post a link to what you found as it seems an interesting topic. (I'm far too lazy to look by myself.)

[geoff murray]

Same question again - how do I protect my images?
In short you can't.
For anyone to be able to view an image it has to be downloaded.
Your options are
upload a very small size
make each image private or in a private gallery
or water marking

In summary, If you want to protect your work from copying the only thing you can do is not put it in a digital form.

Bill

[Longwatcher]

There are a couple of other techniques to minimize the distribution of a digital images. I don't know how they do it, but a few sites disable the save image function of a web browser. Another method is to use a "mouse over" function with the back image having the copyright/image information on it. However, a determined person can still pull up the images from the cache directory if they really want the picture badly.

Also, hard copies don't stop anybody either as the stream of images on internet newsgroups show. Scanners are wonderful technology.

Lastly, All I do to protect my interests are to place a "copyright-year-name" statement with (or on) the images, so that if anyone else uses them for commercial purposes without my consent, I at least have a chance to get compensation from them. It does not stop them from copying them, but it does indicates that I am owed royalties for my efforts if they make a profit on my images.

Just some thoughts

[bigdave]

Disabling "save picture as," or using mouseovers doesn't do much because someone with a smidge of javascript knowhow can still get that image in a matter of seconds. I think there was a post a while back where some one described using a Java applet to display all his images.

I've only taken a semester of accelerated Java programming, so I don't know much. From what I've heard though, the technique keeps the image on the server hard drive and just streams the image directly to the screen using the Java applet. It's pretty easy to program, but there's still one thing that will always render invisible forms of copyright protection void and null... that handy dandy Print Screen button on your keyboard (takes a picture of everything on your screen). If anyone is interested in combining watermarking with a Java applet, it might be a fairly effective method.

Maybe the people working on the JPEG2000 format have some kind of near fool proof protection option. I guess only time will tell.