Stolen Photo on Ebay

[Xander]

Ebay will help you get the guy to not use your photo and can ban him, but you will not see and £ from this

Originally Posted by Dakota

A watermark wouldn't make that much difference if people really want the image and they can use something like Photoshop. Since you can zoom in to 1px it's pretty easy for anybody to remove it if they have the time or patience to do it.

No it wont.. but it slows em down and they are more likely to just steal the next guys photo then yours..

The problem with digital copywrite is that you have to pay the holding company so you lose money there and the cost of retrieving the moneys from the infringing party is also extremely expensive, you will lose money even in the 5k case. like locks on windows it is a deterrent and nothing will stop a determined thief.

All other methods (puzzle cuts, table masks(clear gif), digital signatures) take a lot more time, (water marks can be batch automated) and are really no safer. The only way to completely stop theft is not to post, but then we can t show our work.

All in all we have the short end of the stick.

[mattcbf600]

Happened to me a couple of times - but then I'm not a pro and don't make any money from my photos so it doesn't really bother me.

Having said that a few months ago there was a large fire in Hatfield and I happened to be on scene with my decent camera and took quite a few decent shots - shots I later discovered in building magazines!

I release all my photos under a creative commons licence on flickr - so people are free to take my photos and use them for personal use - their websites and such - but if they use them publicly they must credit me and the can not make any money from them.

When I contacted the publishing companies involved I pointed out that my photos had been taken from flickr, that the licence requirements were clearly attached to my photos (see - hatfield fire 004 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!) and that I was sending them an invoice at the current NUJ rate for use of the images. They paid up within the week.

I really wouldn't recommend putting up any shots that you don't want people to use online without protection - from my point of view I don't see the point in holding onto the rights unless you actually make your living from them - and I'd rather use a licence which tells people what they can do with my photos rather than what they can't.

[Matt Cartney]

Originally Posted by mattcbf600

I really wouldn't recommend putting up any shots that you don't want people to use online without protection - from my point of view I don't see the point in holding onto the rights unless you actually make your living from them - and I'd rather use a licence which tells people what they can do with my photos rather than what they can't.

This is a good attitude. Any pix I take these days and hope to make a few bob out of, don't go on Flickr. The pix that do I'm happy for people to use as long as they don't try to make money.

Matt

[Flyingdoctor]

I don't put any tags on mine or name them with content specific names. Surely this would slow someone down when searching for an image. They'd see a lot before they got to mine. If I post them on a forum then I expect people can use them if they wish. I'd be a bit annoyed if a big company was using any of my images for gain though. I post images on my blogs too. Some of the providers of these free sites want you to give them intellectual rights to all of your content! That doesn't seem right. I ended up using Wordpress as their policy seemed a bit better from that point.

[kentfallen]

If you don't want this to happen then don't post your stuff online it's that simple. Have a look at my website - it contains 6GB of photos and none are obscured by stupid watermarks. If anyone wants to use the data then go ahead. All I ask is that the website is mentioned as the source. So there, if this kind of thing upsets you, DONT POST IT!

[enfieldtravels]

If you are putting the pics up on your own site or a blog it's easy to foil all but the most determined by just dropping a quick 'no right click' tag in for each individual pic or complete page - lots of different ways to do it here: no right click, disable copy and paste, secure web site
This will also work on a lot of blog sites and some photo galleries too.
Richard

[Dakota]

Originally Posted by enfieldtravels

If you are putting the pics up on your own site or a blog it's easy to foil all but the most determined by just dropping a quick 'no right click' tag in for each individual pic or complete page - lots of different ways to do it here: no right click, disable copy and paste, secure web site
This will also work on a lot of blog sites and some photo galleries too.
Richard

But the people who use these photos probably have the developer bars on their browsers which allows you to access and view everything on a webpage including images, css, javascript etc even if the right click is disabled. Like thieves, it will only deter them, but if they want something, they can get it, be it an image or some script. Doing a Print Screen allows anybody to copy the contents of the screen and then load it into an image editor. IF they want it, they'll get it.

[beddhist]

Send the seller a bill. If he doesn't pay, sue him/her.