Unfortunately, there is no way to prevent visitors to your Web site from stealing the images you display upon it. Jim's method is easily defeated (you can take a screen shot by pressing Print Screen and capture the image for later use, with or without a transparent GIF).
The reality is that you cannot simultaneously allow visitors to view an image and yet prevent them from saving a copy of the image. The only option you have, then, is to not put anything on your site that you cannot afford to have stolen. In my case, I don't worry a lot, since, even if someone likes my image enough to steal it, the resolution of the image is generally too low to permit decent printing. An 800x600 image looks large on a screen, but only measures about 2x3 inches when printed at a decent resolution on a good printer. So anyone who wants a really high-resolution copy of one of my images will still have to license it from me. I can't do much about people who steal and use the low-resolution versions on my site, short of suing them, which I usually cannot afford to do, even if I find out about them. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Colin Maddock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2002 05:10 Subject: [filmscanners] Copyright of photos The copyright of photos on the internet had quite a thrashing on this list a few months ago, but did any solution to the problem of people stealing copyrighted images come up? On the nyip.com website this month, http://www.nyip.com/tips/digital_dialog0402.php Jim Barthman has come up with what could be an answer, involving placing a transparent GIF over the image you want to protect from downloading. Colin Maddock ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
