Copy Protection for Images, An Idea
May 17th, 2007 by Steven
With the current situation regarding Rebekka’s stolen images still circling around the digital photographers world, (Read Jim Goldstein’s good article about it.) I have been thinking about ways to protect our images from being stolen off of our web sites and photo communities like Flickr. Unfortunately I couldn’t come up with anything that the photographer can do to stop their images from being snatched. There are a few ways to fool people into thinking that they can’t take your images, but these ways can easily be worked around by the thief. The sad fact is, if someone wants to take one of your images from the web, they can and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The best protection we currently have is to never put hi-resolution images online. The images we put online should have just enough resolution to look nice on a monitor, but not enough to look good printed. 72 dpi at 1024×768 pixels is about the largest I feel you should go. For me the preferred size is 720×523. Also don’t save web images at %100 quality. They don’t need it. I save all my web images at %70 and they look fine.
So, if there’s nothing that we as photographers can do, then what needs to be done to protect our images from the scum that will take them and use them without permission?
Here’s my idea.
The photographers need to have the ability to copy protect the images files. What I mean by that is in order to make a copy of an image file, the user must enter a password chosen by the photographer. No more right click on an image and choose copy or save as and then download the image to your hard drive. With copy protection in place the user would be faced with a password box and a message telling them that they can’t copy this image without the password. The photographer also needs to be able to turn copy protection on and off. This to would require a password. Sounds simple doesn’t it? But, like everything in the digital universe, it’s not that simple.
Not only would someone have to design this sort of protection, it would require a lot of coordination by the software companies, camera manufactures, web site designers, photographers, and let us not forget Microsoft and Apple, to make it happen. Copy protection would have to be universal throughout all operating systems and software platforms and it would have to work on all of the image file types such as JPG, TIFF, and RAW.
Can this be done? Sure it can. Bigger things than this have happened in the world of computers. Will it be done? That’s impossible to say. Maybe if all of us photographers demanded it, it might get done. I’m sure that I’m not the only person out there who’s thought of this idea. In fact, I’d bet that there is already something like this out there. Hell it’s probably being used on our computers right now. There are most likely files on your computer that can’t be copied without permission from someone else in the form of a password.
So why not make that technology available to us photographers so that we can protect our art from the scum that would steal it.
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I agree with you that the best protection we have is to only post low-res images on the web. I stick to 600 pixels or less in the largest dimension. It’s big enough to see what the image is about, but small enough that it would probably look like crud if enlarged.
I see where you’re going with the copy protection thing, but I don’t know how feasible it really is. You can always take a screenshot to get around clicking and saving deterrents. Even if that were taken care of, hackers have shown throughout history that almost nothing is impossible to keep safe. I think it would work for a while, until somebody found a way around it — the bad guys are just going to get smarter.
There was a magazine called “PEI” that used to be in the industry. I recall an article called “Copyright & Ethics” in one of them that suggested many ways to copy protect images. Reading your comments sounded a familiar ring. It might well be worth another read since the two people who wrote it were good.
Copy protection. The endless controversy in the digital world. It ranges from music to video to images. I do not think that there is ever going to be password protection for current image files. It simply would not work, nor would it be feasible. You speak of Apple and Microsoft making it happen? The issue does not lay in the operating system. It does not lay in the software. A witty user could and can circumvent software protections without much trouble. If the protection is built into the operating system, then so is the “deprotection.” So where is the next step, perhaps build protection into hardware devices? A likely candidate, but such technologies can be circumvented as well. It is like leaving the key under the mat or a password written in “invisible” ink. You call them Hackers — the Bad Guys. The title hacker has such a negative connotation and the title is often misused. Knowledge is power. However, this isn’t about that, this is about dishonest people taking your intellectual property.
One way to prove that someone stole your photo is by means of a digital signature embedded within a lossless image, meaning, an image that has not been compressed. This is accomplished with Steganography. This technique is only useful to prove that someone has a copyrighted image–it does not protect your image from being copied–it is much like a watermark. This begs the question, “how can I protect my images from being stolen?” I have the simplest solution to protecting your images.
The solution is to stop posting images online. You want to share your work with the world though, perhaps you have dreams of being a famous artist, but you don’t want dishonest people to steal it? Well, you’ve chosen the wrong place to do it. Once something is digitized, it is a bunch of reproducible ones and zeros. Once that digitized thing reaches the World Wide Web, it is passed through countless networks, cached here, a packet dropped there, opened on someone’s computer, and then displayed on someone’s screen. What is to keep that person from taking a picture of the screen?? Or recording that music with a tape recorder?? Nothing is secure.
Photographers? Yes. And you are entitled to make the money that you deserve from your hard work. You are also entitled to the respect. However, you are trying to conjure up an idea for an age old problem. Aside from putting your work in locked room forever, there is no solution! My suggestion is to figure out how to use the issue to your advantage, rather than pondering how to “protect” your work. Otherwise, don’t post it online!
I’m afraid you’ve underestimated the complexity of implementing this idea. Such a copy protection scheme would have so many points of vulnerability that it’d be virtually useless. It’d end up like a much more fragile and expensive version of those silly Javascript right-click things some people think will “protect” their graphics. It’d just give a passing illusion of security to non-technical people who don’t know any better.
Invisible digital watermarks are probably the best answer. They don’t prevent theft (nothing can) but they can help prove it after the fact. Restricting yourself to small images works ok in some cases but very poorly in others. I scrunched my images and scans down at first, until one day I realized that I was deliberately damaging the quality of my own work in order to make it too unappealing to steal. Why in the world would I want to do that? All my own photos are uploaded at original size and quality, or very close to it. If some dishonest bastard going to steal my work then shame on them, but I’m not going to let them control how I enjoy my hobby.
The password method is an interesting idea, quite a feat to implement as you mention. It would essentially have to be part of a new image format file, and just look at the resistance to just doing DNG.
I simply apply a visual watermark and keep image sizes a reasonable size, but not too small that be a hinder for actual customers. The music industry is still struggling with copyright protection, I don’t imagine the photo industry will catch up anytime soon.
Steven - i was on a ghosttown website once and tried to save a picture (just for my own personal viewing!) and a message popped up saying something like ” nice try, but go there and take you own photo”. now a more astute person could probably have figured out a way around that, but i had neither the time or impetus to do so.
I think you’re on the right track. I’ve been concerned about this more and more recently. I do not watermark my photos because unfortunately, I think it distracts from the original beauty. And, because I know my way around photoshop pretty well, and these can usually be removed pretty easily. (I’m not confessing anything). I kind of like the idea of invisible watermark, but if you never happen upon the person using, it’s useless.
So far, the password seems like the best idea-yet.
Thanks for your blog!