It's your copyright! Right?

I'm not a legal expert so I don't intend to go into the ins and outs of copyright law. However, sometimes it pays to protect your own intellectual property which you or your heirs own exclusively unless otherwise disposed of for 50 years.

Any song you compose, poem you write, photo you take or painting you do is covered by this copyright. You may sell the right to reproduce without further ado, you can sell a limited right of reproduction with rights reserved or you can freely put your work up for anyone who wants to use it; ususally but not exclusively, providing you are acknowledged as the originator. It can be a cheap way for a budding artist to start getting a name for themselves. As I say I'm not a legal expert and there are a lot of grey shades in between. for futher info you can look at Brad Templeton: Coyright Myths but if in doubt consult a specialist dealing with this aspect of the law

Most folk here I suspect wouldn't mind anyone using their material for say a desk top or as classroom material (it would be courteous to ask first) but I know I would be very miffed if anything of mine apeared in a commercial publication without my say so (or payment!) It's not unreasonable then to look for some way to help prevent this. Nothing online these days is foolproof so if you don't want anyone to see that pic of you falling off a chair when you are paralytic then keep the photo in the back of a dark drawer and never let it see daylight :D

OK that's got the preamble out the way.

There is a copyright symbol �©, usually with some wording to the effect you own the copyright along with a date, which can be added any photo or written material you post online. It won't stop anyone determined from pinching your stuff but if it's really valuable and you have records kept you may be able to get redress. For audio or visual material its also posible to add a digital watermark. Watermarking is highly sophisticated digital code embeded in the original files and allows the copyright holder to trace back illegal reproduction. It's used extensively by the recording industry to prevent pirating and like antivirus software, techniques are continually updated and really it's outwith what we are talking about here.

All I'm going to do is to show how it's posible to add a logo to a picture of your own.

First off you will need a photo of your own stored on your computer and some imaging software that will allow you to add text and resize an image. I have two such programs; Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 which came with my digi camera and Irfanview which is an excellent free download from irfanview.com The other bit of key info is how to add the special character(s) available in the full ASCII charater set and they are freely available from the likes of Webmonkey (scroll down to the line that has &# 169; in the Number Code column)

NOTE MS Word can also print these characters from .doc files but they are NOT ASCII characters and won't translate correctly (if at all) into your text input box when you copy/paste them.

The idea is simple, you add a discrete text box to your photo, and re-save the file with the text incorporated. Using subtle colors and placing the text over an area of your picture that has varing shades makes it harder (not impossible) for the text to be removed. There are also special programs that blur and shade the text edges which make removal even more time consuming. Of course it is possible to blank the area out and add new text (any photo would be highly suspicious) or crop the photo in such a way that the essence of the picture remains without some elements of background. This can take an image out of context and spoil it and is also illegal.

So for your fantasic pic of the week all you need to do is add something like the following:

�© Copyright, J. Bloggs, 23rd. April 2006

to your image.

Another way to help protect images is to resize them and save them in a form (eg .jpg) that will degrade the image if it's blown up to the original size.

My camera is rated at 6 Mpix and will allow reasonable prints up to A4 size. The files are big and for web use pretty useless as they are taken in RAW format and I need to translate them into a form you can all see. The best qualty of reproduction is obtained from .tif files (Tagged Image Format) but the files are still large and the screen size would still require scrolling across even on a monitor with 1024 x768 resolution never mind the 800 x 600 I use on my old 15" monitor. I also have broadband which is fast for downloading, anyone on a dialup will have gone to sleep by the time a 6M pix photo downloads. Fortunately it's easy to resize a photo and saving in .jpg format (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a good and recognised efficient way of sending photos via the web. Here it's main disadvantage is an asset. It's a lossy compression algorithim.

To show what I mean:

Take my avatar pic. It's a cropped detail from a full size pic and fits the size constraint (100x100) of the avatar format here. If that detail is blown up say 4 times, about the orignal size of 400x400, and re-saved as a .jpg file this is what we get:



Which is pretty crumby to say the least! That is down to the lossy .jpg image format and the fuzziness is not on the original.

Further, if a text box is added and we copy/paste the symbol, name and date etc. into to it and resave the file we get:



Finally, resizing back to the original gives:



Which would be usable for the purpose but absolute useless to anyone else. Further, I still retain the original RAW data file taken directly off the camera which is sequentially numbered and time/date stamped in the EXIF data.

This means I can use the bit I want safely on the web and I have proof of original ownership. (I could even tell you where it was taken :D )

All the above were modified using Irfanview - it really is a great free download and if you also download all the plugins as well it will read and save to just about any image format you could wish for including Canon RAW files and Nikon files (who actually charge you for a program to interpret your own photos taken with a Nikon camera! :confused: )

Probably loads I've forgotten or got wrong so feel free to bash or ask questions.

[ 23. April 2006, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: frogesque ]

 

Thats a very infomative piece frogesque, but I think I'm going to have to read through it a few times before I can understand some of it, let alone ask questions.

 

Very interesting frogesque, and above and beyond the call of duty!

 

egggscellent stuff! jjordie and I were discussing how certain photos (of celebrities, for instance) are not able to be copied off the internet because they're CR protected and I always wanted to know how it was done!!
Thanks, mate!

 

Regarding celebs and such - The Beeb had to jiggle the Dr. Who photos on their website as dealers were making copies and selling prints on evil-bay.

There is so much goes on in the murky waters beneath that us honest surface dwellers don't even know about. I've just outlined some very basic protection and I've only a few photos that I would really object to being exploited (mainly my eclipse and aurora ones which to me are priceless) but there's been some good pics on GC that could easily be gathered together and added to a portfolio for some lowlife to promote their own site or products.

I'm not trying to make folk paranoid but it's as well to look both ways before crossing the road.

 

thanks for that Froggy!

 

Thanks for that Frogesque, something we don't think about as our photos are posted on here in a friendly informal way not realising who might use them without permission.

 

Thanks a lot - I will take a look at what I can do from your detailed instructions. My instinctive thought was a lower size JPEG would be the best idea. Thought of adding the c symbol - but knowing me, I'd forget to do it to a picture I want to upload.

I too have no problem with sharing my piccies - but I would object to someone using them for commercial purposes without my permission

 

I think if they are using them for commercial purposes I would want more than them just to ask permission. :D