It's the Digital Age. Do You Know Where Your Photos Are?
Thursday February 7, 2008
Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir recently found out that some of her photographs were earning money for another person. According to CNet news, several of her images had been copied from Flikr and uploaded to iStockphoto without her permission. Once Getty Images (who owns iStockphoto) was informed they removed the stolen images and are working with Ms. Guðleifsdóttir to make appropriate remedies.
Theft of digital images has reached epic proportions across the globe. Between random individuals stealing images for personal use, others reselling images (like Ms. Guðleifsdóttir was a victim of), and companies using images they haven't paid for, its hard for a photographer to not loose money. It has even reached the point where "news" agencies run by photographers have snatched images for their pages to illustrate stories under the guise of "sending traffic to the originating site."
What makes this theft so rampant is the difficulty photographers have in tracking their work. Often the photographer doesn't know his/her work has been stolen. There are a few new services, like PicScout ImageTracker that will search the web on behalf of photographers but most photographers still rely on many hours of manual image searches through popular search engines.
For now, the best solution seems to be prevention. Photographers should always watermark their images and upload low resolution/small size images to lessen their attractiveness to thieves. Images under 800 pixels on the long side at 72pixels per inch is the current preferred maximum image size of many photographers seeking to prevent image theft.
Have you ever been a victim of image theft?
Theft of digital images has reached epic proportions across the globe. Between random individuals stealing images for personal use, others reselling images (like Ms. Guðleifsdóttir was a victim of), and companies using images they haven't paid for, its hard for a photographer to not loose money. It has even reached the point where "news" agencies run by photographers have snatched images for their pages to illustrate stories under the guise of "sending traffic to the originating site."
What makes this theft so rampant is the difficulty photographers have in tracking their work. Often the photographer doesn't know his/her work has been stolen. There are a few new services, like PicScout ImageTracker that will search the web on behalf of photographers but most photographers still rely on many hours of manual image searches through popular search engines.
For now, the best solution seems to be prevention. Photographers should always watermark their images and upload low resolution/small size images to lessen their attractiveness to thieves. Images under 800 pixels on the long side at 72pixels per inch is the current preferred maximum image size of many photographers seeking to prevent image theft.
Have you ever been a victim of image theft?
Comments
In the Feb 08 issue of Popular Photography, there is an article about photo theft. The article notes that it is easy for a thief to remove a watermark. The author recommends copyrighting photos as a prevention, and there is helpful information about how to do so.
Unfortunately, registering a copyright only allows you to recover more damages through the courts when you find a stolen image. The copyright itself is automatic when you take the image. The image in mentioned in the article was clearly marked as copyrighted and all rights reserved.
Thanks for information. I find the whole subject so discouraging and am increasingly reluctant to post photos on the web.
Concerning the own website it is possible to add some lines in the html-code, that prevent visitors from copying photos.
if you are not a professional photographer like me; how could i tell if my images have been stolen n are being used around the web, …?
Well, for image watermarking and tracing on internet I can advice SignMyImage. You can sign your photos by an invisible signature. Moreover they provide image tracing on internet. Its better than visible watermarking, you know.
Liz, Just this morning I did a search for gerbera daisies on yahoo. On the very first page was one of my photos but was credited to someone else! This person has it on their flickr account for almost a year now! I written yahoo to try and get this resolved but I may have to get nasty