Protecting Photo Content

[Xstr8guy]

How do you paysite owners feel about protecting your exclusive photo content? Do you disable right clicking in your galleries and overlay your url on all pictures?

I know right-click disabling is not foolproof but does it just piss off your honest surfers who would like to have a personal collection on their harddrive? Besides, isn't content watermarked with your url an effective marketing device?

[Marc]

I read about a method once where you can overlay a transparent jpeg over your image, so when people right click and download your image all they get is the transparent image.
They can get the actual image by going into your source code and find the name but the method still cuts down on how many people actually get your content.

I dont know how exactly to execute that method, but it is done.

[gaystoryman]

I think there are several methods but frankly, other than watermarking and digitally signing the images, I'd not bother. Unless you have a team to help to do the rest of the solutions, it just isn't time practicle for one person operations. For every method there is a counter to it, and no its not giving in either. Its business sense. Watermarking helps in advertising so there is that gain, but eventually we'll have digital encoding that's easy to install, easy to track and easy to prosecute the thieves.

[A_DeAngelo]

Yes indeed. There are "cracks" to the codes that can be employed. We have been working with and grappling with this problem as we get closer to our launch date.

Watermarking is a good thing and the mark will always remain integrated into the photo and "travel" with the image no matter where it ends up. We have been experimenting with various methods so that we brand the image without destroying the image at the same time.

For us, its more important to be able to find the "source" or "studio" that produced the image so that the viewer can find more of the same. This is why we always get into a beef with people who "take" our photos and republish them without consent. We would and do "freely give" images if they in turn, ask for and give our studio credit.

We have been encoding the photos with 2257 information for a long time so that the images are trackable. Our legal counsel recommended this approach from the start and it's easily done in PhotoShop. The important thing here is to issue the photos with the information. What happens to the information when it disappears into virtual space is a different issue. But at least, with our brand visible, we will and can be found.

[gaybucks_chip]

The invisible Digimarc digital watermark is kinda cool in that regard. In addition to rendering the image unviewable in a content-filtered browser, it encodes the image with a unique ID that is issued to the company. The watermark is supposed to survive resizing and most forms of image alteration, as well, so even if someone clips off the visible watermark from the image, you can still prove that it's yours.

Digimarc also offers a spidering service where they will report instances of your photos they find on the web, but it's not much use for adult webmasters, because most uses of an image will be behind a password-protected area, which the spider won't reach.

[Lee]

If you are talking about purely from a surfer persepctive then i really would just add a small watermark to your images and leave it at that.

Surfers are what i like to call 'collectors' of porn, many of them find a pic they like and like to save it on their HD and, if they are unable to do that, you'll find that they cancel their membership and dont give any thought about returning to a site.

I have a friend in the UK who was telling me about this a year or two back, how he will join a site he likes the look of the models on, browses through their content area and finds a few pics he likes and saves them, sometimes, sharing them with his online friends.

By watermarking your logo/url on the stills content, when a surfer such as Mark does share your images, they are in effect marketing your site virally for you.

At the end of the day, i look at stills images that are watermarked as a marketing tool to b utilized like the P2P networks back in the day when you could pop a console on a 5 second movie clip to their P2P users browser, it may be considered 'stolen' content but, as long as it is benefiting you more than the surfer, its something that can be lived with.

Digimark is more of a system to track content theft by other companies and, if you have fully exclusive content then it is definately worth checking in to however, as Chip mentioned above, there are limits to it usefulness.

Regards,

Lee