My regular readers know what I’m talking about.
Part one of the story is deleted. Gone. Forever.
I saved the ‘Thank you’ posting with links.
What you might have seen recently is this text:
Your first visit here?
You might think why the hell I’ve put those annoying watermarks on top of the pictures.
Because an online news site misused one of my pictures
+ people are downloading my pictures without saying a word.
Now they get them with my signiture on.
If you’re interested to get any of my pictures without watermarks
please ask! Very simple! 🙂 email: toblogitse at gmail.com
How did I know about that stolen picture?
I have a counter where I can see how long people are surfing on my blogs, where they’re coming and going, download activity etc., plus I have a tiny little Sherlock Holmes living in 🙂 me plus intuition…
I try to make this short. Going to be diffficult.
The 24th of December 2009 I found out that my picture was stolen
– from my stats – somebody downloaded my old pictures – why?
– IP address was in Egypt – not mine! 🙂
– I did thinking: why one year old picture, somebody from Egypt…
– I googled my blogpost permalink > there it was!
On top of my blog post and of course I had a little bit luck…or is it my curiousity which led me to the right spot…
The original picture was cropped > that’s why the watermark has to be in the middle or in the area where the idea of the picture is gone if cropped!
– I use several search options: I google search with BLOGitse, google image search both with the name of the picture and BLOGitse – try those with your pics and your blog/screen name.
I have had
StatCounter from the beginning of my blogging.
I’ve known my pics have been downloaded but last 6 months or so it’s been really wild.
“If you’re planning to put some of your digital photos on the Internet then you might want to get ready to go to war. The Battle of the Images is a growing problem with no foreseeable truce in sight. Before you know it, you’ll be trying to think of military-style tactical maneuvers to protect your coveted images. Whatever you come up with to protect your images, someone else will come up with a way to steal them.
The most surefire way to keep your images “your images” is not to put them up on the web at all.“
Here are couple of pictures which explain the idea.
These pics are from StatCounter demo page!
You click that magnifying glass…
Can you see the red spot? That’s where this visitor came to this site…
Here you can see all the details…
more details…
for example recent downloads…
Go to StatCounter home page
Look at the live demo – you can play with it to get the idea how it works!
Now I show you how to copy a work in RESPECTFUL way.
I wrote an email to Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid gallery and told him that this cartoon is going to be published on my blog and if he wants me to remove it asked him to let me know.
I like his work. I get these cartoon by email and he makes me smile, great art!
WARNING! If you download this cartoon from my site I’ll send all the information to Hugh.
His art work is protected by Creative Commons A note of that is attached at end of his email.
* * *
RESPECT!
* * *
Let me know if you have StatCounter..
How long you’ve had it?
How do you use it, what for?
If you’re going to open an account there please let me know what you think – more headache when you KNOW but can’t really do anything about it? autch!
EDIT
Blogs. If you’ve recently added a blog to your site, or
if your site is a blog site, it’s possible that a visitor
could post infringing materials (e.g. text, video links,
images). Under the strict principles of copyright law,
you’d be a copyright infringer even if you were unaware of
the posting. Your liability could be significant. The
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe
harbor” from liability provided you publish a DMCA notice
and register with the Copyright Office.
SiteProNews
0 thoughts on “I love sharing but hate stealing part 2.”
Great post 😉
TOMASZ
I checked that. Looks far too complicated and long process if I have 100 pictures to watermark…
Why do they have to go via TwitPic?
To protect your photos use the free web service: http://PicProtector.com or other free on-line tool, see more at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv1LpAKXIO4
Regards,
Kylla tama on ravistellut ainakin minut taysin hereille. Jos minulla olisi pienia lapsia en kuvan kuvaa heista nettiin julkiseksi laittaisi.
Siella ovat ja pysyvat. Ja kenen kasiin paatyvat ei voi koskaan tietaa…
Hyvä, kun ravistelit ajattelemaan kuvien merkintää! Oon vähän laiskistellut sen asian kanssa, mutta varmaan saisin aika slaagin, jos joku kuvani kävisi pöllimässä omakseen.
HI EVERYONE!
UPDATE:
Lately I’ve learned the following as I discussed the issue with StatCounter moderators:
My question: can the StatCounter differ between the two cases – picture downloading to the browser OR picture downloading to the computer HD?
Answer:
No, because both is downloads to the computer, everything you see on the browser window is downloaded before it can be displayed.
If you don’t want to see clicks on links to images, then embed the image in a page, with a link to it, even if you have only the image on that page. If you have the counter code on the page with only the image, you can see when the page is visited (image looked at) in the page load stats but not in the download stats.
…..
Conclusion:
download counting is not that simple or easy.
I believe that one have to be active in monitoring own picture usages via for example google search…
This is the end of this posting.
Thank you all!
ps. Tuuluska: Thank you for your help!
Thanks for all this info! Very useful! How rude of people to just steal your photos. Ugh!
Good info – thanks babe!
Thanks for all the info….you are a wealth of knowledge!
BG
As in real life we are facing good and bad people here,too. As long as they credit me with my photos, I like people using my photos. Depending on the subject I am writing I also use other peoples photos by crediting them. I think this is a very nice way but for others unfortunately there is not much to do.
Arrived here via a group on blogcatalog.
For stats I use Google Analytics, but I think it’s possible to get too bogged down with stats and figures. Sometimes it’s best to simply enjoy.
Mike.
I have a different approach.
When I first put a Statcounter on my blog, I used to get very excited to see that anyone at all had looked at my pictures. It showed many more people look at them than leave comments and I thought how nice that is to know.
When I saw some had been downloaded, I got even more excited. I thought how wonderful it was that people liked my pictures enough to want them!
Now I’ve settled in to blogging, I don’t look at the Statcounter at all.
I come across my pictures in surprising places. I can see they are being used as lures to sites where the owners are trying to increase traffic because they want to get money from adverts. One site seems to catalogue all my pictures and I suspect it is trying to get details of the computers which click onto that page. I can’t see there’s anything I can do about that and everyone knows it happens so . . .
I wouldn’t like my pictures to be used commercially. Have you looked into the Creative Commons Licence? (See the Picassa site which automatically makes albums of your pictures as you post them. That has the details.)
I know lots of bloggers feel as you do but . . . well . . . perhaps ask yourself what you want to do with your photos? By putting them onto your blog, you are sharing them with the world – they are ‘Out There’ and take on a life of their own for other people to enjoy. If there are any which you want to keep back because, for instance, you know they are of commercial value to you . . . um . . . don’t post them!
I hope you do continue to post your photos but, well, I don’t know . . . perhaps don’t look at your Statcounter. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart can’t get upset about.
Lucy
Thanks for sharing the detailed Info.
I have a counter, but I don’t even know if it does these things.
Probably.
I tried to install a similar code though from ‘Tynt’, but for the Life of it I couldn’t find the right spot in my software.
I did it before with google analytics, but well, haven’t worked with those files in a year 😉
Anyhow, thanks and I will look into that Statcounter.
I think I used it on my old Wordpress blog, not sure why I didn’t on my new one. Mh.
Have a good day!
I´ve had Statcounter only for a little time. I have used it to find out if my photos are downloaded. I´ve now seen that it happens, but I have been too lazy to investigate who are the downloaders…
This is not a big problem in my case. I get angry only if I find my photos shown as somebody elses own. That´s the limit.
I don´t feel bad about these stats. I just surf around and check the pages I want to… Almost everyone has some kind of a counter or another invisible program. If I start thinking too much about that, I won´t be able to visit these nice blogs at all. And that is not what I want!!!
ELEGIA
This posting was meant more to help protecting photographs than about stats.
Only thing what I examine are the downloadings.
I’m not interested how long you or somebody else is reading my blog.
Or oh dear, oh dear didn’t leave a comment! LOL!
That’s another topic and we’re NOT talking about it today! 🙂
Unfortunately we can’t control what other people are interested…especially here, on wild wild internet! 🙂
Imagine how many photos of innocent children are downloaded by sick phedophiles?! yack!
I have only the basic hit counter. All it really tells me is that a number of viewers dropped by the site. This tells me that I am not just blogging to myself!
Ok, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, BLOGitse.
I do have a some sort of statcounter in my Kello viiden tee -blog (Sitemeter), but I haven’t check it about for a year.
I’m too lazy and not interested in hwo visits my sites. As I told you before, I don’t care how much this and that person stays in my sites.
Somehow I feel a bit uncomfortable if someone pays so much attention about these stats things.
I mean I feel myself uncomfortable if someone’s expecting something for me. And now I mean for exampl the commenting issue: Do I dare to visit here if I don’t feel like commenting…
I posted this today at 12:08 Cairo time.
Now it’s 15:35 and can’t see this post on my Blogspot control panel! More than 3 hours!
Have you noticed similar problem???