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can anyone here think of a way to watermark pics in the member area with the member's username who is currently logged in? it could be absolutely tiny. i think in some situations, that would be a very good idea as it would clear up who is stealing and using the content.
Ummm.. With all the digital camera software available even my Mom knows how to crop an image.... They would just crop it off.Quote:
Originally Posted by basschick
Great idea!
Once we identify the users stealing content and posting on torrents, etc. do we share their identity in a mutually accessible database?
Oh how ignorant ~ we know most the people stealing our content are far to lazy to do that, though a minority few are losers enough to waste their time ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by abostonboy
I think there was a program a few years ago that watermarks the code into the image. Like, if you take a GQ magazine and scan a page - the file name defaults to the copyright logo. I'll look to see if I can find what it was.
On a Linux box, you could do it (for stills) with Image Magick. It would definitely add some overhead, because adding a watermark and saving each image would take some processor capacity, but it wouldn't be too complicated.
As for Lloyd's issue, we've been looking into adding the Digimarc invisible watermark on the fly. It allows you to store a string of data along with your Digimarc ID within the image invisibly, and the mark survives resizing, resaving, transcoding to a different format (gif/jpg), etc. It's pretty hard to strip off.
I think that's the solution in the long run. Digimarc also has technology for video, but it isn't as mature, and watermarking video on the fly would be a much bigger challenge.
What about something like this?
http://www.digimarc.com/
Lee
Couldn't you possibly be sued for breaking confidentiality clauses in your site's Terms? I mean people are pretty uptight about porn, if you plastered their name or e-mail address on pictures and they hit newsgroups, you could have a PR nightmare on your hands.
Michael
In our case, members can lift images all day long. I would much rather be able to add their name as a watermark on shared videos.
I can dream can't I?
Um they are stealing from you, and you're supposed to be concerned about their privacy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzinerbear
I mean users uploading to their own computer is totally cool, and expected, but uploading for the world to see, for free, is ... stealing and fraud
a digimark won't tell you who is harvesting your content from your member area. a tiny, almost unnoticeable watermark with the username that had the username on it would let you know which member to cancel.
i can't see why a username would be a violation of privacy, although i'd love to hear from chad on this. after all, it wouldn't be the un/pw combo and it wouldn't have any personal info on it.
I see what Basschick is trying to do. However the raw processing power that would be required to do it would overwhelm a server or actually group of servers.
Just look at how slow sitedepth is to diaplay images now. Imagine if it had to process images on the fly?
As Alex pointed out, are images really the problem? It's videos that that are the issue and with any attempt we made (DRM etc) it has just proven to be a nightmare for the consumer.
I was looking at some images that were processed with some form of coding and actually talked to the site owner as to why they appeared to be sharpened. I guess it was the encoding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Squirt
Yeah. You are probably right. Why didn't I think of that. :)
Actually it will.Quote:
Originally Posted by basschick
Digimarc was designed to be able to track individual serialized copies of things, that's the idea behind the Digimarc user-supplied string of data. Our CMS, for example, assigns each member a unique userID which we could encode into the Digimarc watermark. The member would never know it's there, they couldn't crop it off like they could with a visible watermark, and we could instantly match the encoded userID back to the name and address of the user who downloaded it and presumably shared it.
And if you use their spidering service, it will look for the use of your images out on the web (not in password protected areas, obviously) and send you a report of where your images were found.
Hey, I've read stories of criminals breaking into warehouses and hurting themselves and then suing the owner of the warehouse and winning. America is sue-happy. I agree they're already doing something wrong, but that doesn't seem to mean much in the eyes of the legal system.Quote:
Originally Posted by Squirt
Michael
We have border patrol agents locked up for patrolling the border. Go figure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzinerbear
America is such a cRaZy place that Americas actually run and live in other countries. Seriously. They do.
How bout using a field in the EXIF information of JPEGs? The EXIF fields are filled by digicams and such and there are scripts that can edit the information and you could stuff your own strings and usernames in one of the fields.
that's a damned good idear!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DEVELISH
The only possible concern there is that many programs, such as Thumbs Plus and Eyebatch, can be automatically set to strip EXIF info when any sort of manipulation to the file takes place. Of course, a lot of users won't bother, but for the user who is remotely sophisticated, it's very easy to do.
yeah - many programs are able to do that but...
honestly do you rip out the exif info of your pics you put onto your site? :D
I guess - don't really know - but people rather remove a branding on the pic than think about removing exif information inside the pic itself
Both - branding and exif should work wonders if combined with digimark :D
I don't know about others, but our process, when we batch the stills for the site is as follows: resize, remove the exif data, add the Digimarc embedded watermark, add a visible watermark, and rename the image with a unique set ID and sequence number for 2257 purposes. Thumbs Plus does the whole job usually in about 2 minutes for each set.