[Web4lib] Image protection

[Stevens, Julieanne H.]

I used Dig marc  for a while, back when I did more original graphics for
a side web page business. I was able to locate exactly one "theft" of an
image and decided it probably wasn't worth the expense.
http://www.digimarc.com/tech/dwm.asp 
Probably the only way to protect an image is not to publish it to the
web... even pictures from Worth1000, with their name scrawled across the
bottom, can be altered/photoshopped to eliminate the'branding' with a
little time and care. My final solution was to charge clients more for
original graphics and write them off, so to speak.

Juju

Julieanne Hartman Stevens
Reference and  Electronic Resources Librarian
Stetson University College of Law
Law Library
1401 61st Street South
Gulfport, Florida 33707
727-562-7304
Internal extension: 7304
jhsteven at law.stetson.edu
"Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a
book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture
was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a
slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians
doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?" Neil Gaiman

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Robin Hastings
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 6:59 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Image protection

On Jan 15, 2008 5:33 PM, Robert L. Balliot
<rballiot at oceanstatelibrarian.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> Other than the perceived notion that images are protected
> by copyright and therefore off limits - are there any technological
> methods or procedures to inhibit reproduction of original jpeg
> or gif images on the web? Can anyone recommend a solution?
>
> It is fairly easy to set up a no right click java script command
> and I have thought about watermarks a bit. But watermarks can
> detract for the overall imagery and the script only slows people
> down a bit.
>

Unfortunately, once an image is viewed on a user's computer, it's
already downloaded to their machine and in their possession - you
can't *prevent* the downloading (and use) of that image, since they
had to download it to see it. You can slow them down and make it more
difficult for the casual user to quickly grab the image off of your
pages, but that's about it. The no right-click javascript is one way
to keep most people from casually stealing your images. I remember
hearing about "digimarks" a while back - invisible watermarks that
some software (maybe Photoshop?) could insert into your image before
you upload it to your server. No visible watermarking, but you could
search on the digimark information and find anyone who is using your
images on their websites. I don't know what the current state is on
that technology! Good luck!


-- 
Robin Hastings
robin.hastings at gmail.com
http://www.rhastings.net
_______________________________________________
Web4lib mailing list
Web4lib at webjunction.org
http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/