Topic awaiting preservation: Do not steal my pics

again i´m not sure if this is the right place for this but i`l try ^^

is there a way of preventing users of saving images on my website to their local machine ???

You can disable the right-click menu, as well as the image toolbar in IE (sorry, I don't know the code to do this), which will probably prevent 90% of your users from downloading your images. Ultimately, however, if someone really wants your images, and knows what they're doing, they'll get to it eventually. They can look at the source code and locate the URL, and even if you obfuscate your code somehow, they can always just take a screenshot of the page and crop it is PS. Such is life.

no

Resistance is futile.
You cand do whatever you want. In the end, any 11yo kid can press Print Screen and paste the result in his cracked version of PhotoShop.

You can disable the right click, but funny thing... anyone who can left click can simply click on the picture and drag it to their desktopper. So basically, you need to disable any clicking, which could be seen as a bit of a pain to a hand full of the peole viewing your webpage.

no but, you can imbed images in flash, then some how, not allow the flash to be catched, and um.... then you run into problems with *print Screen*.

hmm ok the rightclick-blocking sounds good i will have to live with the rest of it

thanks allot

Ok, but bare in mind that you are about to remove an important feature of the user experience and that any user of FireFox or Mozilla ( and certainly Opera and Safari ) can make your effort vain via Tools > Options > Web Features > Enable JavaScript > Advanced > Disable or replace context menu.

You'd rather provide some 72dpi versions of your pictures online and updload the high resolution ones on a secured area.



(Edited by poi on 07-24-2005 20:42)

My advice is to give it up. As poi said, put low-resolution pictures up if you don't want your users to have access to the high-res ones. Bottom line: if you don't want people downloading your images, don't put them up in the first place.

Right click "blocking" is a good way to get people to hate your website.


 

What exactly are these pictures of that are so precious you don't want anyone to redistribute them but so not precious you will put them online?

Right click blocking makes websites seem unprofessional.

Keep in mind that once a user has seen your image via your webpage, it is already on their local computer.

That's how the whole thing works...

Right-click blocking is a waste of everyone's time, and people who use such scripts should have their web hosting services revoked.

well the site is for a photographer who is concerned about someone else using his photographs

Well then, you should include a copyright notice at the bottom of every page, preferably with a link to another page that spells out exactly what can and can't be done with the photographer's images. An example of this: http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/copyright.php

Then if you come across unauthorized usage of the images, take legal action. That's about all you can do.

It's important to explain to the photographer what we've explained here: if he puts his images for display on a web site, he can't protect them. He'll have to make that choice. By keeping the images at a low resolution you can limit the use that they'll have to people, but if they can see it, they can use it.

Don't use a right click script. There are many legitimate uses for right clicking (such as "open in new window" on a hyperlink to name just one), and it's not worth frustrating your visitors for a false sense of protection.


 

I dont have much to suggest but I think making a website in flash will pretty much secure your images, you can also protect a movie by making it unaccesable if a user decides to save it on his hard drive. Ultimatly Print screen still work and it took me less than a min to capture a screenshot and crop it in photohop.

I suggest for your client to depend on on legal copyright law for protecting his images.

here is a good flash example http://www.arthurmount.com/home.html

Tell the photographer to read this.

Dan Heller used to have a great section on the counter-productivity of so-called "anit-theft" measures, but it's now gone unfortunately. The section above, however, generally conveys the same idea.

As many have already said, there is no foolproof way to prevent someone from "stealing" photos posted on the internet. The only other approach (which has also been mentioned) is to alter the photographs so that people are less likely to steal them. Low resolution copies was one method mentioned. Another method would be to slap a huge waterwark across the photos. Depending on where you place this watermark. it may harm the user experience, but it may prevent casual theft (since someone would have to remove the watermark in order to use the pic).

[Edit: Or you can just read the link Wes posted right above. Guess I should have read that first. Heh.]
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(Edited by Suho1004 on 07-25-2005 03:40)

So this guy sells his photos for a living?

Disabling the right click is very annoying and will simply make the site less enjoyable.

What most websites of this nature do is watermark them, but ofcourse they can still be edited.

There is one way that I think no one has mentioned, which makes life alot harder but may also make the experience at your site less enjoyable... You can put the images into a movie and embed the movie. Have you ever tried to take a screenshot of a movie? In most cases you cant, you just get a black screen where the movie was playing.

Of course someone can still download the movie throw it into a program like premier and get the images frame by frame - but this is too much effort in general for people who print screen.

You would have to investigate this option yourself, you may be able to work it into your website as a slideshow.

Other than that generally you just have to live with it - the artist should know its all part of being an artist, if he is so worried about this than maybe he needs a new career ;P

There's no real reason to be overly paranoid in protecting his images. A simple watermark in the center should allow his work to be viewed sufficiently while keeping people from downloading and using his images at bay.

Many artists only show small versions of their images on their websites, I'm inclined to agree with Jestah however, there's no need to be really paranoid, because there's not a huge amount that can be done, but I would recommend a watermark of some descritption.

Cheers,

Just like Jestah said - watermark the online version. That can be done dynamically. Use .htaccess to prevent people from LINKING to those images.

And don't mess with my right click menu!

Saying nothing much new, but I have to agree with what's been said:

"Urgh!" to the right-click block! Doesn't stop a five year-old, but (as said above) irritates the hell out of people. Some with a wicked streak might even see this as an invitation to defeat all obstructions and rip the entire site, just for the hell of it.

Embedding in Flash will stop the casual clicker, but (as said above) it doesn't stop a <print screen>. Embedding into video is a novel idea, but anyone can disable their video overlay - and then it's right back to that old <print screen> key.
Of course, if determined enough, one can always download and dismantle either video or flash, but it isn't necessary. Grabbing and cropping a digital image is even easier than ripping one out of a magazine, and you don't even need Photoshop to do it.

The best (only?) approach is to copyright and watermark, and provide only the quality and size that you won't so badly regret giving away. You simply can't be any more protective over data that has to exist on a viewer's machine in the first place for them to see it at all.

You can at least stop them from adding insult to injury, or bandwidth theft to copyright infringement...

quote:

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Pugzly said:

Use .htaccess to prevent people from LINKING to those images.

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(Edited by White Hawk on 07-26-2005 04:16)

Hmm how do you disable video overlay? The problem Ive had is trying to watch a video while playing a game or something but the video just display a black screen, would it fix that?

If your client is ready to pay for the protection of his pictures, MyPictureMarc from Digimarc could help. At least they have an oportunity to track and trace your images..

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Support Justice for Pat Richard

(Edited by Rinswind 2th on 07-26-2005 19:41)

H][RO - no. Disabling acceleration features will simply cause most games to fail completely.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzz.....

You could put a transparent gif over your image with a similar name, if someone saves the image they may not understand whats happened.

But there is no way to stop someone taking an image, all images on the net are downloaded locally first before you seem them at all.

I played with Digimarc once. It's useless. The slightest change to an image and the watermark is no longer readable. If somebody takes an image and resizes it a bit to place it in their layout, watermark's gone.

And remember that in order for an image to be tracked and reported to you, their spiders have to find it by accident first.