# VA Based Photographer Dealing With Interantional Thief



## jowensphoto (Apr 4, 2013)

I follow this guy's work via Facebook, saw this in my feed.

Stolen For Profit: Local Photographer Deals With International Thief | RVA Magazine | Richmond, VA


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## Greiver (Apr 4, 2013)

That's despicable. He should have put a watermark or something though to prevent this.


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## 2WheelPhoto (Apr 4, 2013)

Greiver said:


> That's despicable. He should have put a watermark or something though to prevent this.



True but watermarks can be  almost as easily removed as they are applied to a photo


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## Greiver (Apr 4, 2013)

2WheelPhoto said:


> Greiver said:
> 
> 
> > That's despicable. He should have put a watermark or something though to prevent this.
> ...


I don't personally see how to do it "easily" but that's my limited photo editing experience talking. I'm sure there are better ways to protect your photo's though. The point is, he should have done more to prevent this.


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## amolitor (Apr 4, 2013)

There's nothing, technological, that you can do to prevent this. This is a social and legal problem, and it is there that the solutions exist insofar as they do. Which, mostly, they don't.


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## Mully (Apr 4, 2013)

I think there is there is a script that can be applied to your website to prevent images from being downloaded or lifted.


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## amolitor (Apr 4, 2013)

Let me clarify. There are technological things you can do. These have two effects:

- by erecting a barrier to downloading, the alert the more-or-less ethical that they should stop
- they prevent the technologically clueless from stealing your work

These are both somewhat valuable services. They do not, however, prevent theft. Even a small amount of technical savvy will enable an unethical person to download any image that's web accessible. Even a small amount of technical savvy will enable an unethical person to remove a watermark. And so on, through any technological mechanism you might apply.

Technology cannot download images that are NOT network accessible, and it cannot make a low resolution image high resolution. Almost anything else is possible, however.


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## 412 Burgh (Apr 4, 2013)

Greiver said:


> 2WheelPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > Greiver said:
> ...



give me a photo with your watermark and I'll remove it within 5 seconds


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## 2WheelPhoto (Apr 4, 2013)

if its out there, it can be snagged.


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## amolitor (Apr 4, 2013)

Photoshop has a watermark remover tool these days. What's it called, "content aware fill" or something? It does a lot of things, but one of them is pretty much instant watermark remover.


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## 2WheelPhoto (Apr 4, 2013)

^^^  +1, and a plethora of other custom software


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## KmH (Apr 4, 2013)

Mully said:


> I think there is there is a script that can be applied to your website to prevent images from being downloaded or lifted.


Screen shots cannot be prevented.

A script can only prevent right clicking on an image.


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## Overread (Apr 4, 2013)

Yep most preventions are only going to keep honest people honest and probably stop them using your photo as a background on their desktop/screensaver. The only way to fully prevent any possible theft is to never release your photos to the public.


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## jowensphoto (Apr 4, 2013)

I believe it was Charlie who removed my watermark (in less than 5 minutes) and replaced it with an image of Snoopy


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## Derrel (Apr 4, 2013)

The original photo was good! Good enough to steal. Theft of on-line images is very,very common. If an image is posted on-line, and it's a decent image, it WILL BE stolen. It might not make it to a tee shirt sold through an exclusive club in Russia...but it might very well end up in a brochure in Malaysia, or a pamphlet in Caracas, or on the side of a bus in Hartfordshire.


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## jowensphoto (Apr 4, 2013)

Derrel said:


> The original photo was good! Good enough to steal. Theft of on-line images is very,very common. If an image is posted on-line, and it's a decent image, it WILL BE stolen. It might not make it to a tee shirt sold through an exclusive club in Russia...but it might very well end up in a brochure in Malaysia, or a pamphlet in Caracas, or on the side of a bus in Hartfordshire.




Trust me, this is not something I'm unfamiliar with. 

https://www.google.com/search?tbs=s...u5q8J6k-MFbrKRtD-itCuA&hl=en&bih=830&biw=1664

Look familiar? 

These are by far the worst offenders:
BlackBerry &#9829;&#9565; ÍÈßó ÇäÊó ÔãÓ ¡ äÂÓíåÂ ÇáÛÑæÄÈ &#9562;&#9829; - ãäÊÏíÇÊ Úíæä ÇáÈÍÑíä
http://msh2wer.tumblr.com/
ÑãÒíÇÊ æÎáÝíÇÊ bb ÍÕÑíÉ ÈÇ ÈáÇß ÈíÑí ÇáÚÑÈ - ãäÊÏíÇÊ ÈáÇß ÈíÑí ÇáÚÑÈ Blackberry 4 arab


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## jowensphoto (Apr 4, 2013)

Eff me.

So I used Google translate on a few of those pages. Not only has that image been watermarked, it's also being sold as a mobile phone wallpaper with someone's, who is not myself, watermark on it.


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## amolitor (Apr 4, 2013)

Yeah, but think of all the EXPOSURE you're getting!


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## jowensphoto (Apr 4, 2013)

amolitor said:


> Yeah, but think of all the EXPOSURE you're getting!



Ba dumb bum PSH!


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## Majeed Badizadegan (Apr 4, 2013)

Copyrights don't work.  I think they're ugly and distract from the image anyway, so I don't use them. 

But just to show you how easy it is, I took this into photoshop cs5 and removed the watermark with a simple lasso selection and a very small amount of cloning. I spent literally 30 seconds getting rid of it. Took more time to resize the canvas so you could see the images stacked.


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## palkin (Apr 7, 2013)

Greiver said:


> 2WheelPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > Greiver said:
> ...



In Photoshop the bandaid tool does it in 2 seconds. Very useful, but very sad when it comes to photography theft. Plus you can do screencaptures in Flickr images which are supposedly protected. Which is rather sad


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## shefjr (Apr 7, 2013)

It really bothers me and makes me feel violated for you. I don't produce anything of great quality yet but, I hope to someday have a couple photos that I could hang and be proud of. I would be enraged if I saw someone benefiting or claiming my photo as their own all from a photo that I was able to produce. It makes me not want to share the photos that I take now and they are mediocre at best. WTH!!! That sucks!


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## KmH (Apr 7, 2013)

In Photoshop the 'band aid tool', is officially known as the Spot Healing Brush Tool.
Used in Content-Aware mode the Spot Healing Brush Tool is very handy for removing a variety of things from an image.


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## Greiver (Apr 8, 2013)

palkin said:


> Greiver said:
> 
> 
> > 2WheelPhoto said:
> ...


Sad indeed that people are so talentless they have to resort to this


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## Greiver (Apr 8, 2013)

So I just tried it out and while it's definitely quick and easy to use I'm guessing it's not as easy to master cause it just looks kind of blurred and the colors are mixed up and it doesn't look at that convincing to me.


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## o hey tyler (Apr 8, 2013)

Mully said:


> I think there is there is a script that can be applied to your website to prevent images from being downloaded or lifted.



There is, and when you come across that script all you need to do is open your resource manager and view the direct links to all the images both full size and thumbnail size.


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## amolitor (Apr 8, 2013)

You can, with more effort, force people to forge referrer headers as well to get to you image. Your web site management interface may have a "prevent hotlinking" feature you can turn on.

That's another low wall, however. It requires a trifle more effort to hop over.


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## lesliemorris85 (Apr 16, 2013)

This is one of those photography issues that keep rearing its ugly head. I&#8217;ve had several friends who have been victimized by online theft and sadly, there&#8217;s apparently not much we can do about it, or even if there were the hassle might make the effort not worth it.


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## KmH (Apr 16, 2013)

You want to hear sad. According to professional photographer association surveys, fewer than 5% of US professional photographers make the effort (or know how) to register their copyrights so they have a legal foundation on which to even pursue a thief.

It's little wonder online image theft is so rampant.


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## Pukka312 (Apr 17, 2013)

Derrel said:


> The original photo was good! Good enough to steal. Theft of on-line images is very,very common. If an image is posted on-line, and it's a decent image, it WILL BE stolen. It might not make it to a tee shirt sold through an exclusive club in Russia...but it might very well end up in a brochure in Malaysia, or a pamphlet in Caracas, or on the side of a bus in Hartfordshire.



I agree with this 100%! In Tanzania, it seems a lot of businesses get images from the web...some may purchase stock photos, but I'm willing to bet many do not. I believe most people here aren't even aware of copyright laws. And the ones that are, but choose to take an image anyway probably feel so far removed in Tanzania, it's probably safe to agree they most likely will never be found out. I've seen billboards, brochures, and magazine ads here that I'm certain are from the web (though I suspect the billboard ones have to be purchased just to have a high enough file resolution)

I actually have a massively obstructive logo on my photos here for that reason, including a partially transparent logo bar that spans the image.. If someone really wants to take the effort to steal my photo, I make them work for it. Unless they just crop the image smaller I guess. I get more nervous that people will lift my images from TPF because I drop the massive logo for you guys.


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## jowensphoto (Apr 17, 2013)

Billboards don't even need to be "that" high res, since they're viewed from afar.


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## nottusyeroc (Apr 17, 2013)

Not a pro but can't images just be uploaded in a small file so it's no use


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## CowgirlMama (Apr 17, 2013)

nottusyeroc said:


> Not a pro but can't images just be uploaded in a small file so it's no use



Small files are still big enough for some uses. The brochure my son's specialist gave me about his braces had pictures as small as the avatars here. And you want your image to be big enough to see what's in it.


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## S.Pierce (Jun 11, 2013)

What a shame! I can only imagine how many copyright infringements go unnoticed.


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## Elfstop (Jun 11, 2013)

jowensphoto said:


> I follow this guy's work via Facebook, saw this in my feed.
> 
> Stolen For Profit: Local Photographer Deals With International Thief | RVA Magazine | Richmond, VA




What this person needs to do is start his own t-shirt business and sell them in the US.....using his own photo. Bet they would sell in Russia too.


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## S.Pierce (Jun 11, 2013)

> What this person needs to do is start his own t-shirt business and sell them in the US.....using his own photo.



Agreed!


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## Designer (Jun 11, 2013)

The shirt doesn't do the photo justice.

He changed it a lot.  That is one way in which the thief can claim "originality".


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