Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/07/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Andrew Nemeth writes: > Well maybe, that is until you start to create > and display work of commercial value, then your > attitude changes markedly! Maybe, but I doubt it. The examples I've seen were both the size of a matchbox _and_ visibly watermarked. Even without the watermark, it would have been impossible to use them for anything worthwhile, so why bother? And they were so small that even without the watermark they could hardly be distinguished, and with it the actual content of the photo was almost invisible. Personally, I'd never _buy_ an image that I could not see clearly to begin with. > For instance, images & sounds I have of the > southern most point of Australia, South East Cape > <http://4020.net/secape>. Content from this region > is very rare, and so the temptation to "use" > my material is huge. Beautiful shots! All Leica I presume? You're not doing exactly what I'm criticizing, though. In your case, the images are large enough to see clearly, and the watermark is down in the corner, not sprawling across the center of the image. The way you've done yours looks just fine, and it looks like you've prepared them carefully for the Web, too, which is nice. > In the past I have had my images stolen from > my www site for commercial use at least three > times (that I know of). I was not paid either time. So did you sue? I've had images stolen a few times that I know of. I get a fair number of requests for commercial use but with no offer of payment. I guess a lot of people think that I should give stuff away for free even when it is going to be used in brochures, posters, and other commercial or promotional material. They usually don't bother to call back when I tell them that I expect a royalty (a very tiny one, but I guess they don't want to pay anything at all). This is especially weird when the potential buyers are multinational companies. Heck, when _I_ worked as webmaster for a multinational company, I actually paid the royalties myself on the stock photos I used--PhotoDisc isn't _that_ expensive. (It was too much trouble to try to get the company to pay a $20 royalty.) > Uncredited theft is bad enough, but lately > some of the theives actually have tried to pass > off my work as their own (especially > the VR stuff of Sydney during the Olympics). This is when film comes in handy, as you have a physical slide or negative to prove it's yours, if worse comes to worst. > Well, not any more. I put a big, bold, partially > transparent watermark on every image I upload now. Yes, but it's in the corner, so it isn't bothersome. > I would love to use something more discreet > like digital watermarking, but none of the current > technologies work reliably (if at all). And they never will, for practical and technical reasons. Digital watermarks _always_ degrade the image, for one thing. And, if they are invisible, they don't stop copying of the image, which defeats their presumed purpose. You need special software to detect them--and why would a thief install that? Even in Photoshop, the only mainstream product that supports digital watermarking, most people disable it because it takes forever to open files with watermarking turned on. It's also quite easy to remove digital watermarks. Not that the average thief would even bother, of course, since the images can be used as-is, with the watermarks, anyway.