Thread

I have a client that has very rare photos of very famous person and he want to let folks see them for a small fee but he’s worried about people copying the photos and selling them, and rightfully so. I told him it’s very difficult to keep things like photos from being downloaded but that I’d ask around for any ideas that might help him. If you have any ideas please do share. Thanks.

You can display them through flash to protect them from being “downloaded”, but every keyboard still has a print screen button and there’s nothing that can stop it 😊 .

inparo, Yeah that’s what I told him too.

This is not meant to sound short in any way at all, just in a hurry at the moment.

I have posted quite a few times on these forums about this exact problem. There is no way of stopping someone from taking a photo if they can see it on the screen, absolutely none.

The only thing that you can do is to show them a lower-resolution version of the image on screen which is just no good for anything and if they tried to print it then it would be absolutely useless to them. You can then allow them to pay for a high resolution file which is stored securely which you then let them have access to once they have paid.

This is all you can really do I’m afraid.

Oh and you could also put watermarks all over the low resolution images if you want to.

Best wishes,

Mark

You can then allow them to pay for a high resolution file which is stored securely which you then let them have access to once they have paid.

He’ll do that anyway. As I understand it, he is worried about the dissemination of exactly these photos, ie the ones obtained after paying.

What about watermarking?

You could look at Digimarc to leave a personal identifier in each image sold.
Inside photoshop (and maybe other editing software) you can embed a Digimarc watermark.
(see filters/plugins > Digimarc).

Depending on needs and amounts and pricing, he could add a watermark manually with every sale or go for more expensive (automated) solutions and plans. This won’t prevent copying or printing but (i have tested this already about 10 years ago), even after scanning it in, the plugin found the info, and could read it, out of a laser-printed black and white copy. You could give it a try for yourself.

Show us the photos and we will make a professional assessment 😊

You can then allow them to pay for a high resolution file which is stored securely which you then let them have access to once they have paid.

He’ll do that anyway. As I understand it, he is worried about the dissemination of exactly these photos, ie the ones obtained after paying.

Not the way I read it but then I read things differently 😉

If people are paying for the image then hopefully they aren’t going to just send them on to other people as that would pretty much be silly if they are doing that kind of thing. If your charges for the images are high enough in the first place then I wouldn’t have thought that people purchasing them are likely to just send them on to other people.

Maybe you should have a purchasing agreement that states this? If you then come across the image being used somewhere and it isn’t from any of the people who have paid on your site then it should be pretty easy to enquire as to where the person got the image from and then very quickly put a stop to it.

Best wishes,

Mark

If people are paying for the image then hopefully they aren’t going to just send them on to other people as that would pretty much be silly if they are doing that kind of thing.

Well, silly or not, that is precisely what people are doing with music, movies, and software….

Maybe you should have a purchasing agreement that states this?

What for? It’s not legal without it, either, and people still do it.

If you then come across the image being used somewhere and it isn’t from any of the people who have paid on your site then it should be pretty easy to enquire as to where the person got the image from and then very quickly put a stop to it.

You try doing that to some shady host in, I don’t know, Russia. Or one of the hundreds of torrent sites. Or filesharing in general.

Sounds like he is better of just selling them to someone else (as in print,news,ebay etc)....sorry but it sounds silly ...“Come & see 3 photos of John Travolta for $1.00”. How much residual is there especially since most likely you will see thos photos on some torrent,blog,utube, somethig.com after first exposure…

Over the Web = forget about it…no one wants to pay for ‘promise of seeing something’....giving a preview even with watermark…well…I have seen it already so why pay?

He might be better off targetting collectors & fans for a larger chunk of $....

If people are paying for the image then hopefully they aren’t going to just send them on to other people as that would pretty much be silly if they are doing that kind of thing.

Well, silly or not, that is precisely what people are doing with music, movies, and software….

Maybe you should have a purchasing agreement that states this?

What for? It’s not legal without it, either, and people still do it.

If you then come across the image being used somewhere and it isn’t from any of the people who have paid on your site then it should be pretty easy to enquire as to where the person got the image from and then very quickly put a stop to it.

You try doing that to some shady host in, I don’t know, Russia. Or one of the hundreds of torrent sites. Or filesharing in general.

My points were only made due to the nature of the images we are talking about here. If these are quite specialised images then I would have thought that the people buying them (if the price is set high enough) wouldn’t be daft enough to send them on anywhere else after they have paid for them. I know it happens with music and what not but if these are specialist subject images then I would hope that this would happen a lot less.

Not too sure what you mean by a purchasing agreement not being legal without it Ingmar? What I am saying is that anyone who pays for an image signs to say that they will only use that image for the purpose they have paid for. If they then go and give that image to someone else they have broken the contractual agreement and this can then be used against them. That is definitely perfectly legal, well at least where I come from anyway.

Best wishes,

Mark

Not too sure what you mean by a purchasing agreement not being legal without it Ingmar?

I meant that distributing other people’s copyrighted work is generally not permissible (exceptions not withstanding), and you don’t need an additional “purchasing agreement” to make that clear. It’s simply the law.

What I am saying is that anyone who pays for an image signs to say that they will only use that image for the purpose they have paid for.

That’s my point, this goes without saying. But copyright law is a complex issue, and this forum is perhaps not the venue to really get into it 😊

If they then go and give that image to someone else they have broken the contractual agreement and this can then be used against them.

Why go to the trouble of using a contract (with the additional onus of proof that it was duly agreed upon, due consideration, ect ect) when the law will do just as well?

That is definitely perfectly legal, well at least where I come from anyway.

Probably, but almost certainly not necessary. Which was my point.

Mark

One idea that sprang to mind would be to individually watermark the image with the purchasers name. The idea would be to have the name repeated over the whole image, not enough to obscrure the image but enough to make editing them out as difficult as possible.

I’ve read that some MP3 files being downloaded legally are being embedded with the purchaser’s information to make them traceable. It’s not as obvious as the watermark but it affords the seller some protection if the files are redistributed illegally.