elusivedreams Posted October 8, 2003 Posted October 8, 2003 Hey everyone!! Ok I need some help, I run a website on a famous actor and this girl who must go to my site everyday has been stealing my screencaps, scans, & graphics,that I have scanned,created & captured myself. I do tag them all with my site name, well here I find out that she erases my name and writes her name on them. I have written her about 5 times asking to give me credit and to please stop stealing,but all I get back is nasty emails or she just ingnores me. I have contacted her hosting place, it's a free place. I'm really hoping they'll do something about it. But so far notta..... I spent lots of time and money on my site and I don't appreciate her taking all my stuff. She signed my guestbook a while ago and I got her ISP # and I did block it, although not sure if that did anything. Can anyone please help me and let me know if there's anything else I can do, it has been going on for about a month, I need some sort of help. Thank you so much!!!! <3,Jennifer Quote
KevinW Posted October 8, 2003 Posted October 8, 2003 Most of the current versions of photo imaging programs (Photoshop, PhotoImpact, etc.) provide the ability to record a digital "signature" on your image. Even if the image is downloaded, cropped, or otherwise edited, the digital signature remains - allowing you to prove that it's your work. -kw Quote
strodeath Posted October 8, 2003 Posted October 8, 2003 Hm, if you created it, put a copyright. Then sue her! Haha.. Quote
Wilexa Posted October 8, 2003 Posted October 8, 2003 Jennifer, Take a look at this really long thread on various attempts to stop pic stealing. By the end of the topic they had some scripts that made it hard to grab an image. There are ways to slow people down, but you can't stop 'em altogether. kw has good advice, but unless you want to get lawyers involved, it is really hard to stop someone on the net who doesn't give a darn about right and wrong. good luck, dave Quote
elusivedreams Posted October 8, 2003 Author Posted October 8, 2003 Thanks guys;), I don't really want to get lawyers involved or anything, but I'll keep trying. Thumbs Up <3,Jen Quote
Wilexa Posted October 8, 2003 Posted October 8, 2003 I forgot to say it before, but, Welcome to the TCH Family! ...dave Quote
Feather Posted October 8, 2003 Posted October 8, 2003 Hi Jennifer and welcome to the family! I understand what you are saying about people stealing your images and stuff as I had a similar problem with someone taking my graphics and like you, I don't take too kindly to people who do that after I put in hours of hard work. So, I went out to search for a simple solution and found a page. Unfortunately, I only saved the text and the code and forgot to save where I found it. I have learned that if people want our art, they will find a way to get it, one way or another and short of taking someone to court over it, there's not a lot we can do. For those people who are not real computer saavy though, there are little tricks and this is one of them. Anyway, here's the text I saved and maybe this will help some. Take a look at the above image. Okay, I can just see you thinking "Yeah, I'm not blind. What's so special about a picture of me, the Phzzz? Maybe Phzzz has been been mixing his medication again or something??". Ahhhh... but there is something special about the above image. Save it to disk (Right Click || Save To Disk in Internet Explorer) and open it in your graphics program. Hey, that's weird. All it opened was a 1 x 1 pixel GIF. Where's the pic of the Phzzz? Let's try looking at the images properties. Hmm... it appears to point to that stupid GIF. But I know that's not the case. OK! This tutorial deals with one way to stop images from easily being downloaded off websites. As you may notice (if you're obsessed or something), apart from the above example, none of the other images on any other sites use this copy protection trick. That's because I know that you people are smart and could steal it anyway, and also that I couldn't really care less if someone borrowed a JPEG or GIF or two. Although I'd doubt that you would want this silly pic of me you see here. If you do, I pity you! The above method is referred to as a TABLE Transparency Fakeout. You see, what happens is basically this: a table consisting of a transparent (see through) image that is sized to fill the table is set as a background image. Since the image that takes up the table is transparent, all the end user sees is the background image. However, when they try to Save it or view its properties, the tables contents (the transparent image) are pushed to the front. So, instead of saving phzzz-tiny.gif, all that was saved was the fakeout clear.gif. Here's the source code that I used: <TABLE BACKGROUND="http://www.phzzz.f2s.com/phzzz-tiny.gif" BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0"> <TR> <TD> <IMG SRC="http://www.phzzz.f2s.com/clear.gif" WIDTH="60" HEIGHT="60"> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> clear.gif is a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent GIF. You would use such a small image to save storage space and download time, as you can resize it to fit the image on the client side, minimizing the size of the image download by the browser onto the users screen. Feel free to use it and abuse it on your site. Adapting the above source to suit your own purposes is not too hard, just change the TABLE BACKGROUND=" " to point towards the image you want to show. (eg. TABLE BACKGROUND="show.jpg") and change the WIDTH=" " and HEIGHT=" " to reflect the images size. Before doing anything that is a reasonable change, it is best to stop and think about things. Don't just do it because you can do it. Do you really mind if someone downloads one to look at or to set as their wallpaper? Personally, I couldn't really care. The thing is, when it starts to get on the net and some AOL d00d is using your corporate logo with an "Eleet WareZ |-|3r3" text box over it to symbolize his collection of broken links, then it gets bad. The type of people that steal images are normally brain deficient anyway, so the TABLE Transparency Fakeout will probably stop them dead in their tracks. By viewing the source code, the path to the image can be found and pasted into the browsers address bar, so the intelligent community can get to your images. Let me know if this works for you, o.k.? Feather Quote
!!blue Posted October 9, 2003 Posted October 9, 2003 Feather, my god, it's brilliant! * evil laughter * * even more evil laughter * thanks, !!blue Quote
Feather Posted October 9, 2003 Posted October 9, 2003 More than one way to peel an egg I always say! Glad to be of some help for a sister artist. Feather Quote
TCH-JimE Posted October 9, 2003 Posted October 9, 2003 Hi, Its a clever way to get around but a quick look at the code will reveal the trick and the way to get around it. Jim Quote
Deverill Posted October 9, 2003 Posted October 9, 2003 Hi Jennifer, Welcome to the family! As others have said, there's not much you can do through technology to stop people from doing this. They can do a screen-grab and nothing you do can help stop that. I know you said you didn't want to involve lawyers, but most folks get the stuffing scared out of them when they receive a cease and desist letter from a lawyer. You could probably get one written for US$25-$50 and that may be the end of it. Of course, you could create "How Buffy stole my work" page but that makes you seem petty. The best bet is to digitally sign it as was mentioned and send her an email saying "If you check with the _____ program you will see my signature. The next contact will be from my lawyer since I have established ownership of the files on your site." It all just depends on how much enegry and effort you want to put into it and how much pain it causes you to leave it like it is. Best wishes! Quote
i960 Posted October 12, 2003 Posted October 12, 2003 A better way to do that table fakeout thing would be to use CSS to put the image in the background. Not only would it be standards compliant (the above code isn't), it would make it a little harder for them to find the source of the image since the path would be in a separate css file as opposed to being in the html. Of course, it's still not really effective since they can do a screen capture like Deverill said. All it's going to do is stop the thieves who are lazy or otherwise don't really know what they are doing. Kinda like the steering wheel club... a few seconds with a hack saw and you can cut through the steering wheel itself and rip that thing out of there. It'll just slow down the amatures. Your best bet is a lawyer. Quote
dreamcloudwolf Posted October 12, 2003 Posted October 12, 2003 Another way is use php script which switches the real image with a blank image. See demo and get the script at: http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/003389.php Of course, it's not gonna solve the problem of screenshots. Still, I thought that script was really good. Quote
jballard Posted October 12, 2003 Posted October 12, 2003 No one mentioned the Creative Commons offering ... seems like that would be a way to at least announce what copyright parameters you want to use with your materials. Jeff Quote
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