Image theft and website security

shakari · 03-08-2007, 10:01 PM

A while ago we found someone was using our company logo to sell their pirated CDs on e-bay. It turned out that they had acquired the image via google. We stopped them using the image and had the images removed from the google library and made it more difficult for people to copy our images from our website. - But even now, if someone is really determined to steal our images, it's still possible.

Has anyone out there had the same experience, is it possible to stop my images being stolen and if they are stolen what recourse against the thieves do I have?

Nameslot · 03-08-2007, 10:13 PM

I don't know much how you can stop the pirates to steal the images.

But if you don't want your images to show in google then I thing there is some function in google webmaster account for images search. Please try that one.

The neater trick would be to use some javascript to disable the right clicks on the images. But smarter people will save the page on their PC and take the images.

shakari · 03-08-2007, 10:38 PM

That's exactly what we did...... and first thought that by disabling the right click facility we had it taped - but as you say, the image can still be saved to a PC and then used from there..... At least we now know to keep an eye out for people usung our images without permission.

In fairness to the guy who was using our image, he thought (or claims to have thought) the image was in the public domain because he could just download it from Google.

Nameslot · 03-08-2007, 11:27 PM

Yes friend this are the games that life plays with us.

For some webmasters Google image search is like a blessing to bring in more traffic.

While for some it is a curse

atox · 03-08-2007, 11:32 PM

Please do not disable the right click context menu, this will make your site look as unprofessional as possible and if your image thief turns of javascript then it won't make any difference what-so-ever.

WebGeek182 · 03-12-2007, 12:59 PM

There is a certain extent that when you put your site on the web, you are making everything on your site available to the public even if you are not authorizing them to use your work.

Make sure your your copyright info and terms of use are clearly stated on your site somewhere. It's best to warn people first. If they don't cooperate., you can always turn these people in for copyright infringement.

Natural Elements · 03-19-2007, 08:06 PM

Hello,

You can try to protect your pictures with digimarc via photoshop. The service is pretty expensive but you can track your pictures all over internet.

I never tried, but it is a possibility to protect your work. Perhaps there are some other programs with the same concept.