Stolen web images (Translator Please!!)

[clare]

I'm going to have fun with these image ........ (expletive)

I have reloaded these images onto my site with the copyright logo attached. Go see

I am now going to take Gary's idea and change another on on each of the pages to have a stolen message!!

If they are atill using them tommorrow I will change the names of my images so they no longer are able to link!

jeaniesa - I am going to take a look at the link that you provided and incorporate this as well - Thank you

platscha@cs.com - I feel for you - having someone win a prize for your image and being told you are the imposter is out of order. Do you still have the original negative - if so I would approach the company and show them that they have made a mistake. (another digital issue that will be hard to prove!) Good Luck!

Thank you all for your feed back - I was really depressed when I saw these images come up - but thanks to everyone I am getting my revenge

[clare]

jeaniesa

My web server comes with a link to Matrix stats
http://matrixstats.com/
In this there is a section called spongers! I check it every now and then to just check everything is running well. They also send my a stat's chart each week to tell me how many people have accessed my site and the search engines that refer and loads of other useful data on pages being viewed etc.

In my weekly report I noticed that there were over 1100 accesses to a webcrawler that I did not recognise as a link I had put in place! So I went onto the site to see who they are - you know the rest.

Steeling images that we spend our time creating just isn't on. It breaks my heart when someone who has no right to use an image is flaunting it for everyone to see. And not even Paying Me for it!!!

I have learnt a valuable lesson today - and I will not let people like this get away with it - nor should you! Together lets eat them for breakfast and growl at them for lunch!

Clare

[jeaniesa]

Clare - the PPC website appears to be down at the moment. I imagine it will be back up soon. I don't know HOW they prevent right-clicks - only that they do. (You can't view source either.) I do have some contacts in that organization however, so I'll try to find out how it's done. (Also, I think I posted at the same time as you previously - don't know if you saw my question just above your last post.)

Platscha - I can't even imagine being accused of stealing someone's picture - who actually stole mine and won a prize for it! Yikes!! I firmly believe that person's actions will come back to haunt him/her however!

Jeanie

[jeaniesa]

Clare, I just took another look at your site and I noticed that you've added a "watermark" to all of your images. Did you just do that or was the watermark always there? Would you mind sharing how you did that?

Thanks, Jeanie

[clare]

Originally posted by jeaniesa
Also, I think I posted at the same time as you previously - don't know if you saw my question just above your last post
Jeanie [/b]

Yes we posted together but hopefully my second post will help

Clare

[clare]

jeaniesa -we did it again!!!!!


The water mark was created by placing a text layer over the final image with the (c)Clare Sadler repeted several times ++++. Then I changed the layer setting until it showed the writting without obsuring any of the image and reduced the opacity till it was legable. Normally either opacity or difference but it depends on the image.

Clare

[jeaniesa]

Thanks for the info Clare! I know that my webhost provides a bunch of stats, but since I don't have my webpage up yet, I haven't actually bothered to figure out what the stats actually tell me. Now I'm inspired to go look!

I really like how you did the watermark b/c it doesn't detract from the image - but it's enough to catch your eye and make you look closer. Very elegant solution!

Jeanie

[Doug Nelson]

Disabling right-click will only prevent the most casual users from stealing images. You can still use "view source" from the menu to get the paths.

There is a way to prevent anyone from linking to your images if you have access to your .htaccess file (check with your webspace provider). It's a bit complex to get into here, but it prevents anyone clicking through from any domain but your own from viewing images.

Someone used one of our images here in a Howard Stern chat forum, and that one image drove our bandwidth usage way up. So I simply renamed the image.

[clare]

Thanks for the info Doug

I will look into remove the right click properties - and get in touch with my host for further linking issues.

I have just emailed just about everyone who has images on the site to tell them there images maybe being used without there knowledge. Hopefully this will stop there steeling of images - and give them alot of work to try and keep there pages upto date. I am also going to go to this site on a regular basis and sent emails to all the images sites.

clare

[jeaniesa]

Thanks for the additional info Doug. I know there are some sites which also prevent View Source too. Or have I imagined that?

Do you know how to prevent right-click from working? I haven't been able to figure that out yet. Is it done in HTML or with the security settings at the webserver level?

And thanks for the tip about .htaccess!

Clare, I was going to suggest contacting the owners of other images on those sites, but seems like it could be a big job to track it all the time. I applaud you for taking that on!

Jeanie

[jeaniesa]

Well, I used the cached pages from a google search to look at a PPC page and it appears the the right-click is disabled with a Java script such that when a right click occurs, a dialog box pops up and says (in effect) "This is a copyrighted image. Thank you for not copying it."

Jeanie

[clare]

I am going to leave my new edited images on this site for probably about a week. Then I will rename them. I am also looking into Doug's suggestion of not being able to download the images and keeping a eye on my stat's. Hopefully with the editing that I have done to my images this will deter future image scouts from using my images.

I am also going to send the web site an email telling them how discusted I am at there business, and that I have sent all other image holders an email to this effect.

Hopefully in time they will learn that they need to pay for the work they exhibit - or at least give a credit to those images they use.

Keep your eye on those who are steeling images - we work hard - we deserve credit for what we have produced.

Clare

[jeaniesa]

This is not what I had planned on doing today, but interesting nonetheless. If anyone is still following this thread, I did a little research on "disable view source" and came up with a ton of information. The general consensus is that if you are using HTML, there isn't a way to prevent people from seeing your source (and hence the links to your images.) Java script can be used to disable right click, but a user can just as easily turn off Java in their browser and the script would be useless. There are deterrants you can use, but the only way to really "secure" your site is to use something other than HTML.

If anyone's interested, here are some links that I found helpful in explaining the issue:

https://lists.latech.edu/pipermail/j...er/004115.html

http://www.geocities.com/felgall_com_au/htmlt4.htm

http://www.drpeterjones.com/hidden/hidden.php

Here's some sites that provide some code:

http://www.js-examples.com/example/?ex=580

http://users3.cgiforme.com/htmlhelpo...sages/383.html

And here's some shareware encryption tools:

http://www.softlandmark.com/HtmlEncryption.htm

This has been a fascinating lesson for me Clare. Thanks! (But still sorry to hear your images were being used illegally.)

Jeanie

[jeaniesa]

We're posting at the same time again!

[clare]

Thanks jeaniesa

I am going to look into your links tomorrow- I am bushed for today - this was meant to be a productive day - it's turned into a very frustrating day. Hopefully with all the help that has been given here I will beable to beat the bad people and move on.

Thank you all

Ready for a large beer - Clare