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Archive 2013 · Screen captures and image theft

  
 
BenV
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Screen captures and image theft


_SBS_ wrote:
I second that Meh.

No ones photos look good with a big watermark shat on top of it. Even the corner watermarks or the cleverly placed and kinda fitting in ones do nothing to actually protect your image. Sure it will advertise you if your image is stolen and they didnt crop, clone, or use one of the watermark removal tools on it. But then we are just talking about the zillion of bloggers who think its ok to take any images from the Internet and use them in their blog. Not really a big deal.

If your going to put
...Show more

Thats the whole idea. Nobody wants to steal photos with giant water marks on it.



Apr 29, 2013 at 12:20 PM
BenV
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Screen captures and image theft


_SBS_ wrote:
I second that Meh.

No ones photos look good with a big watermark shat on top of it. Even the corner watermarks or the cleverly placed and kinda fitting in ones do nothing to actually protect your image. Sure it will advertise you if your image is stolen and they didnt crop, clone, or use one of the watermark removal tools on it. But then we are just talking about the zillion of bloggers who think its ok to take any images from the Internet and use them in their blog. Not really a big deal.

If your going to put
...Show more

Thats the whole idea. Nobody wants to steal photos with giant water marks on it.



Apr 29, 2013 at 12:20 PM
BenV
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Screen captures and image theft


_SBS_ wrote:
I second that Meh.

No ones photos look good with a big watermark shat on top of it. Even the corner watermarks or the cleverly placed and kinda fitting in ones do nothing to actually protect your image. Sure it will advertise you if your image is stolen and they didnt crop, clone, or use one of the watermark removal tools on it. But then we are just talking about the zillion of bloggers who think its ok to take any images from the Internet and use them in their blog. Not really a big deal.

If your going to put
...Show more

Thats the whole idea. Nobody wants to steal photos with giant water marks on it.



Apr 29, 2013 at 12:20 PM
BenV
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Screen captures and image theft


_SBS_ wrote:
I second that Meh.

No ones photos look good with a big watermark shat on top of it. Even the corner watermarks or the cleverly placed and kinda fitting in ones do nothing to actually protect your image. Sure it will advertise you if your image is stolen and they didnt crop, clone, or use one of the watermark removal tools on it. But then we are just talking about the zillion of bloggers who think its ok to take any images from the Internet and use them in their blog. Not really a big deal.

If your going to put
...Show more

Thats the whole idea. Nobody wants to steal photos with giant water marks on it.



Apr 29, 2013 at 12:20 PM
RustyBug
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Screen captures and image theft


The point @ they don't care @ image quality because of their small image realm has some merit, but imo ... it is much more the societal aspect as they see no wrong involved in it. Add to that the fact that there is no one even trying to teach it to them that they are wrong for doing so or hold them accountable to it and it is unbridled cattle rustling via cloning. Then whenever someone does speak to the impropriety of it, they are viewed as a leprous societal outcast for doing so.

The argument that they aren't really taking anything sounds merit-able at a first superficial glance. But, if you understand that on the deeper level, you taking something is depriving me of the value of it. Sure, I may have retained the original, but copying it incessantly has made a remarkable impact on the supply & demand of the item and thus devalued that which I have retained ... thus the argument that you didn't really take anything should really be whether or not you deprived someone of the value of that which they own ... AND YOU DON'T. In that regard, you reproducing something in an unauthorized manner does take something from the legitimate owner ... but society has become too superficial to realize that they are in fact taking something ... taking away value (i.e. theft) from the owner.

The same goes for people who incessantly pirate music and books and give it away to all their friends. They truly see no wrong in it. In most cases, they see it as them being very smart @ how to avoid paying for it. Imo, it is a societal issue ... and best I can tell, society has no interest in doing anything to change it. I see quilters run into the same issues with their patterns, blocks and designs and I'm sure there are a myriad of other crafts/professions that fight the issue as well ... yet society continues to refuse to acknowledge it as the simple theft that it is.

Philosophical dinosaur ... sure, that's me, but if I go around and pirate from the "big boys", they'll make me pay dearly for it. Why should it be any less wrong to pirate from the little guy?




Apr 30, 2013 at 01:05 PM
mdude85
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Screen captures and image theft


BenV wrote:
Thats the whole idea. Nobody wants to steal photos with giant water marks on it.




I have found the solution to image theft -- display photos that are so terrible and have so little value that they are not worth stealing!



May 01, 2013 at 12:50 PM
markedman
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Screen captures and image theft


That's not an option for me.
I sell event photos online. My clients need to see a decent image to purchase.
So at this point a watermark is my only option. Along with the complaints.
It is a no win situation. But most people understand why I do it.



May 01, 2013 at 01:14 PM
Arka
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Screen captures and image theft


BenV wrote:
Thats the whole idea. Nobody wants to steal photos with giant water marks on it.


Yeah, and most people don't want to look at those photos either. Not a great marketing strategy.



May 02, 2013 at 10:43 PM
cineski
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Screen captures and image theft


Hah! I've been saying this for years (and I'm in my 30's). Most people simply don't understand quality anymore. I also feel it started with youtube downgrading what people think was quality with video. It's ease vs quality now.

BluesWest wrote:
It happened with audio, so why is it a surprise that it's happening with photography? My generation (I'm 60) was obsessed with listening to music through a high-quality stereo system. Every kid in my college dorm had a great stereo in their room. Fast forward a few decades, and most kids are perfectly happy listening to mp3s through a crummy set of ear buds.

So photography has caught up with the quality race to the bottom. Video is probably next.

John




May 15, 2013 at 11:09 AM
glort
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · Screen captures and image theft



If I couldn't do onsite sales, I wouldn't do the event now.
Online just has too many problems and has too low a return rate for me. I really don't know how people that are doing it make a decent living from it. Maybe it's just a numbers thing and shooting bigger events than they have here allows some worthwhile return.

Between the image theft, people forgetting, not being able to find the site with the address you gave them, haven't got around to it and all the other things, for me it's far too much effort for too little return.
I tried all the recommendations and practices but could never get it to work remotely as well as onsite. Those that are able to make a living from online sales are smarter than I am that's for sure.

With the screen photos thing, perhaps it is a matter of letting people know it's wrong and adding some ( possible) peer pressure. Perhaps signage would help forbidding phones and saying that image theft is a crime. It can always go both ways. Some people will take heed, others will see it as an achievement to do something they are forbidden to do. At least I guess they will then be educated it's wrong .

I guess the severity of the problem dictates the value of the cure. When I stopped doing online sales I knew I would miss out on -some- ( meager) sales but I also knew doing it would cause me to miss out on a lot more onsite purchases. Nothing was going to be perfect so it was a matter of choosing the lesser of the 2 evils.

In this case I think the question would be if the amount of lost sales would warrant having another person on site to watch over the Stations and stop people doing it ( as much as possible) . I always had someone assisting with the stations and answering questions so perhaps this is why my problems with it have been minor ( although notable).

I guess you have to weigh up whether if stopped, these people would buy the images or not? If not, then your not loosing any revenue at least. If so, then one might want to trial having a Customer service person on hand and see if takings went up any.

There were things I looked at like this and simply put down to a sales/ wages equation.
If I put an extra person on at $x an hour, will that person generate more sales or revenue than what I'm paying them?
If they are not going to give me an additional 2 sales an hour, then it's not worth bothering to me.

I guess it's like anything else. If you had the top of the line camera and lens or 100 Stations, would the increase in sales justify it?
There is always things we can spend more money on and improve, the question what it the return going to be in doing that? The other thing is, will watermarking or using screen filters etc do more harm than good in putting the paying/ buying clients off by making the images have less appeal or creating an uneasy feeling or difficulty for them in purchasing.

Sometimes there are things that can be done, it's just more economic to let it slide and write it off as a cost of doing business as unsatisfactory as that may be.



May 15, 2013 at 09:49 PM
mdude85
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · Screen captures and image theft


RustyBug wrote:
The argument that they aren't really taking anything sounds merit-able at a first superficial glance. But, if you understand that on the deeper level, you taking something is depriving me of the value of it. Sure, I may have retained the original, but copying it incessantly has made a remarkable impact on the supply & demand of the item and thus devalued that which I have retained ... thus the argument that you didn't really take anything should really be whether or not you deprived someone of the value of that which they own ... AND YOU DON'T. In that
...Show more

You would have a pretty hard time convincing a court that copyright infringement is equivalent to theft. That logic falls apart pretty quickly. Also, there is no law that protects the value of copyrighted works, nor any law that intrinsinsically or per se equates devaluation to theft. In fact, it is often the works of highest value that are often subject to theft.



May 19, 2013 at 07:38 PM
markd61
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · Screen captures and image theft


mdude85 wrote:
You would have a pretty hard time convincing a court that copyright infringement is equivalent to theft. That logic falls apart pretty quickly. Also, there is no law that protects the value of copyrighted works, nor any law that intrinsinsically or per se equates devaluation to theft. In fact, it is often the works of highest value that are often subject to theft.



You don't have to convince a court of theft, just copyright violation.

Copyright infringement laws exist because they are a form of theft in the fact that they deprive the owner of the income they would have earned from the sale of a print or the licensing revenue.

A bigger issue raised in this thread is that people are making images that people feel are not worth buying but are worth making trivial snaps of.
This means we are trying to sell photos with insufficient value embodied in them.
This tells me that we should not be making this kind of photography.

The world is telling us that. Why are we complaining?

We should get over it and make stuff that people will pay for because our skill brings value unavailable to them except by payment for our services.

This is the cause of all the "photographers can't make money anymore" threads.
You can, except when you insist on being in a market that doesn't exist anymore.
You want to make a living shooting sports, fashion, portraiture, bands and landscape? Should have started thirty years ago so that you would have the history, connections and experience to get somewhere in the market.
Fashion can still make good money but there are ten thousand wannabes on Model Mayhem that could equal the best efforts of the top pros today. Pro sports? Not likely.
Teams and sports? Maybe but even the established pros are seeing their business being eroded by the ubiquity of DSLRs.

If people wont pay, don't offer it.
Find the corner of photography that has repeat business. Find that corner that has clients that need your photography for business reasons, not emotional ones.
Emotional needs are met instantly by the cr@p photos from phones.
Business needs are a logical decision that says " I need great photos or my boss will fire me" or " I need the best photography or my company will go broke and I will live in a box at the park".
THAT will open checkbooks.
Your photo of little Sally winning her first 5K may be genius. But the snap Dad took on his phone or his DSLR is the one he will show because it has all the emotional content that yours has and thus you have nothing to sell.(he also probably has 200 of them)



May 19, 2013 at 11:30 PM
TT1000
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · Screen captures and image theft


@mdude85 wrote: "You would have a pretty hard time convincing a court that copyright infringement is equivalent to theft. That logic falls apart pretty quickly."

Try the first sentence of the order in this case. A memorable opener for sure:

http://www.detritus.net/rhizome/legal/bizmarkie.txt






May 20, 2013 at 05:43 AM
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