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Protecting Your Images Online

Ever had your images show up on another website without your permission? If you have an image gallery or photoblog there is a good chance that if it hasn’t happened yet it will!

I read an article recently that summed things up very well, the theme of it was - "there are only two types of images on the internet - the ones which have already been stolen and the ones yet to be stolen".

Regardless of whether you have copyright notices posted on your website or not, it does not seem to change the behaviour of some people. I recently found one of my images *hotlinked to a LAW forum, with absolutely no reference or link back to our site (how ironic) and of course without our permission. The footer on every page of our site clearly states that all the images and content are copyright and can’t be reproduced without our permission. We also have a, terms of usage page which reinforces the copyright of our site content including images.

Definition

Hotlinked - images are images which reside on a server other than where the web page is being served from. Each time the page is viewed it consumes bandwidth from the source server where the image resides.

So what can you do?

  1. Enable hotlink protection on your server via an .htaccess file.
    This will allow you to either disable the display of your images on the remote site completely or you can serve up a completely different image than the one that they were expecting.


  2. Don’t put full size high quality images on the internet.
    Never put print quality images on a server that is accessible to the public. If you have protected areas with larger images ensure that it is secure and not accessible. I never post images that are larger than 640x480 (around 0.5 Mega Pixels), 72DPI and greater than 85% quality.


  3. Watermark your images.
    This is an interesting mechanism. To be effective you need to put the watermark across the centre of the image in a prominent place! But, if you do this it will certainly detract from the overall image and the viewing pleasure of your genuine visitors.

    As a compromise you may consider placing a smaller unobtrusive watermark in one corner of the image. This will however only act as a branding exercise for your honest visitors as it can be easily cropped without detracting from most images.


  4. Enable right click protection.
    Using javascript you may be able to prevent right clicking of images and thus stop them from accessing the save image option. Don't bother not only will this annoy your visitors as they will loose access to other controls on the right click menu but, javascript can be disabled.


Regardless of what method or methods you employ to protect your site if people can view your site they can always copy the images. Your web browser will cache a local copy on your PC or you can do a screen print of the image!

What we have done is to enable hotlink protection and will be progressively placing small unobtrusive watermarks on the bottom of our larger images.

We are interested to learn what other people do!

there are other ways
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 28/11/2006 - 22:51.

My favourite thing to do when someone is hotlinking is to not block access to it but do a couple of more malicious and nasty things. If the image is only referenced in a few places on my site, I modify the local references to the image and rename it. Then, I put a particularly nasty replacement image in place that gets served up to the remote site. If they are allowing me to put an image into their website, they have to suffer with what I give them. BTW, timing is critical on this - it is best to do this of a Friday afternoon as it will affect them all weekend when it is a business website.

An alternative is to use htaccess and serve up a different image based on the referer. Scum hwo steal images never learn and the best way of protecting yourself is by teaching the scum a hard lesson.

If you have not already done so, send the laywers who were hotlinking your image a bill for the usage of your image - they just might think twice next time.

I did think about it!
Submitted by photo-info on Wed, 29/11/2006 - 21:27.

I certainly did consider doing what you suggested and replacing the image with another one that was perhaps a bit unsavoury. But, at the end of the day why should I stoop to their level and lower the standards of my site and risk my reputation?

All I can say if up and coming lawyers have no issue with using other peoples images without permission and, leching bandwidth that someone else is paying for and then try and argue that there is nothing wrong with it - that probably fits in nicely with their morals.

After all, the victims usually have less rights than the criminals! So why would this situation be any different!