Photos Easily Stolen For Online Use

I see you have watermarks on your images here. People can copy from anywhere on the web, screenshots, etc

Anyone stealing an image from here isn’t going to be a customer anyways. What can they print..a post card stamp?

X2 what Jester said. The only way to prevent this is to pull everything off of every web site you've posted to and never display your work online again. That said it's a reality of doing business online, in a similar fashion that shoplifters are a reality of a brick and mortar retailer.

There is no way to protect your images from being "borrowed" no matter where you post them to the web.

There is no protection, nothing you can do including watermarks.

I have demonstrated it here a dozen times.

I can take the small image with a watermark off any page on the net and have back up here for sale in a 24x36 size in about 45 minutes.

I've identified FAA as one of the most common sources of my images being copied. Like everyone is saying people will copy from anywhere. The biggest problem I have with FAA is that the watermarks are not customized to include your account name. What good is a watermark is all the credit goes to FAA and none goes to you? I see my ripped off images everywhere with credit lines only to FAA. Nobody can find me to buy an image because of that (in the super unlikely event that someone does follow a credit line, which in my experience is basically never unless there is a clickable link to the source).

Nancy,

Welcome! As mentioned, the "cost of doing business" on the Internet! Think of it as a "backhanded compliment"! While I got you on the line, nice images and CHEAP! I always suggest that artists here do some research, starting on the "Recently Sold" page and see how artists, with similar artistic abilities, price their stuff. I would think that you should be higher, say around $27 or a bit more for your smallest print sizes. Look at a few and see how they do it and then "borrow" that pricing structure. Like many here, you don't proportionally adjust your pricing as the SIZE of your prints increase. Here's a great example:

Your nice shot, Halibut Cove, 26"x40", $80....on the "recently sold" page, an artist with a price of $28 for his smallest size, has his 26x40 for $233!!! Mine is a bit higher, under $250 or so. FAA isn't very "price-sensitive" like brick and mortar stores, people search for the perfect image and then buy it!

Hope this helps, Boss,

Rich

Unfortunately, no site can protect work from thieves who are adamant on having an image that is on their page.

As soon as you go to a site, the image is on your computer. No right-click or watermark stops that. All images go straight into a temp folder and can be grabbed from there by people who want it. That is how browsers are designed to make browsing and speed more efficient.

I only have to take a screenshot and I have any image I want, from any site.

We do, however, counter this with these options

1. We have no right-click on some pages but all mobiles and some browsers ignore that order. Nothing we can do about that.
2. We offer a watermark, although this does deter buyers.
3. Enlarging any thumbnails degrades the quality of the image terribly so it is useless for a print. Remember if they want the image for a phone wallpaper etc there is NOTHING we can do to stop that, even phones have screenshot takers
4. Your full resolution image is hidden away so people only see the low-resolution copy
5. On the full resolution preview on the main image pages, it only shows a small section and a border is actually removed. That way, even if people took the time to open all the full resolution image and copied each segment to stitch together, they would not get the complete image.

The low-resolution thumbnails and preview images are as safe as we can make them, your full images are not on the site

You need to look on the site which is stealing the work and find a contact link. Then you need to file a DMCA notice (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)

Unfortunately, these need to be sent in by the artist themselves to the site stealing them or to the server host of that site.

You can also find that here http://www.whois.com/

The best way to prevent it from happening is definitely to delete the account. I considered that once but then figured it would be a lot harder to get any sales online so I stuck around.

You can always register images with the copyright office and then hire one of those IP law firms to go around a sue people for you.

Close your account. Stop using the internet. Find a cozy cave somewhere. Do cave paintings.

Problem solved.

Thank you, Nancy. no one here has ever thought about anyone stealing our images.

SMH

the images are 900px. you can print it, but people usually buy larger, and not many print at 2x3". you can't be online and worry about that stuff, stuff like this happens. the thing i see that happens 90% of the time is - they blame faa. but in reality they posted a full size image on their website, flickr, facebook etc. and it scaled it down, then there is a really large one out there.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Your photos can be taken from anywhere. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, any POD etc. Like others have said the only way to avoid it is to not upload anywhere.

Hi Nancy, I thought about that a while ago but now I don't worry about it. If someone is going to steal it, then they will find a way. If it isn't online it can't be stolen. I once had a friend on vacation call me to let me know that some of my art was in an Australian store as prints and I didn't sell to anyone there, but I did have it as an image online. So, there you go.

Macrella, I certainly hope you did something about that, more than just a "there you go"! Otherwise, if this was recent I can point you toward some resources to help.

Oh boy, the market for 4x6 prints just took a nose drive. There goes the tiny house wall art market.

Welcome to the internet! What took you so long? Your best bet is to not post anything anywhere on the internet. And if you display your art in public someone can take a photo and put it on the internet. If you sell a large print it is worse. They can then make a large copy of it. Best off just keeping everything on a hard drive offline if you are really that concerned.
The risks have been widely know since the first keyboard with a screen save button. We all ave to evaluate the risk vs the benefits.

Tom S said:
"Nobody can find me to buy an image because of that (in the super unlikely event that someone does follow a credit line, which in my experience is basically never unless there is a clickable link to the source)."

That's absolutely nonsense. If your image is on the internet it can be found by an image search. Tineye and Google search by image are widely available, well known and free. I have been using them for a decade. I can find any image on a major site in less than a second by using the Google right click and search.
https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZiueprRCKhcP_1amE_1J1y2_16Psp4G8_1D2K-xpmg7KSfkot5v_134x47P9AjiXuvDGDaxgqEm9kXX-4jSkjMZVCKl29K5MFz3mSTl2WT4lm837hoIA5PShp6HWWx0W1xUk900wAJnFngSE47rCndzr_1qk6dgIrph58qj1sncOLgXm-1MgCzfdWOSnVDzyYFEDO7qWYhw59wk4gkdPoZ8pBYZKI1uJ7FsZ2K3fVRPbNStaKGYP-axkt3SrAQsloOQnvu1nnuOwMXX_10NconanpXwUZ2lJzrv4dq5rgcc4VTijpu6iNXbNxP1-e5TzAFchyBC1vV3_12o7H8zX6s4u_1bOBHbis2sD7lQ

Bradford, I see exactly what you are saying and use that all the time. But really, who does that other than photographers trying to figure out where their stuff went? Nobody! At least not anyone who is likely to buy your work.

My observation is:
1. If credit is provided in the form of a clickable link back to you, there is a chance someone will click the link if they love your picture.
2. if credit is provided only in the form of your name, there's a really really small chance someone will search you in Google
3. if no credit is provided, there is essentially no chance anyone will search the image in Google, unless they are another photographer curious about an image and it's origins.

Further, if your name is not on the image, many people assume the image is public domain, I'd venture to say nearly 50%. That's probably the most common misconception about copyright. How many times have I been told by someone you didn't watermark it so don't blame me? This includes major businesses who told me that before I hired an attorney to deal with them.

We assume it's common knowledge in these forums, but outside of our photography circles none of this is really understood well.

My thought is you need to be seen to sell. So you can't hide from the internet. But you should also be prepared to deal with the consequences before you post to the internet. If that means registering copyrights, watermarking, finding an IP enforcement service, or whatever, then that is a cost of doing business. And making sure you've taken reasonable steps to minimize your risks and maximize the chances of being found even if your image is separated from you.

With the saturation of images on the internet the thieves will never even notice you are gone as they will find what they want someplace else. Not everyone is out to steal from you. someone broke into your home and stole your computer would you burn the house down to stop them from doing it again? If you close your account then what? Quit making art altogether?

Unless you are rich as Croesus - and have great lawyer friends - I guess you have to learn to live with it!
Many a boat is afloat, yet holds a certain level of water in its hull: it certainly does not hinder too much
either the boat's performance, nor the enjoyment of the boat!

You would have three ulcers if you worried about the number of times your art has been ripped-off; ten
more if you traipsed the country's courts of litigation!!! Get used to it, learn to roll with the punches. If
you cannot, then don't be a published artist!

Which kind of contradicts the whole idea of art:-
art is FOR someone: you are not an artist
"if it's not out there!"

I do understand that images can be stolen from internet sites but that doesn’t mean that sites should go out of their way to make it easier for people to do so. The 3D view feature which FAA uses shows a camera icon in the top right of the image, which when clicked gives a new view with different view (“top”, “left angle” etc) and another camera icon highlighted in red, which gives the viewer a high(er)-res image for download. This is higher res than a screenshot and, according to the software providers website is to allow us to create quality marketing images for our products. This facility is available to the general public without being logged into the website.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Watermarks deter buyers.

Larger screens demand larger images. You want to sell then this is the new world you are selling in. We sell a LOT of prints. We would not sell any more with small images and large watermarks.