Protect Art: Tools that help to protect and sell your Photography Online.

Legal Issues
No Permission

BITCOIN is a remarkable crytographic achievement and the ability to create something that is not duplicable in the digital world has enormous value ~ Eric Schmidt CEO Google

It's the blockchain: I Went to the First Live Auction for Rare Pepes on the Blockchain When the establishment art world butts up against memes and Bitcoin.

2918 ipstock.com
SELL YOUR PHOTOS, ILLUSTRATIONS, VECTORS ONLINE USING THE BLOCKCHAIN ECONOMY METADATA MANAGEMENT

12/14/16 150 FILMMAKERS ASK NIKON AND CANON TO SELL ENCRYPTED CAMERAS read the comments

THE PUBLIC'S RIGHT TO KNOW Investigative Journalists are reporters

2016 CNET: How to move your photos from Flickr to Google Photos. “After the latest ONE BILLION PEOPLE Yahoo hack, you might be ready to delete your Yahoo account. Before you do so, however, you need to save your Flickr photos from oblivion. When you shut down your Yahoo account, your Flickr account gets deleted along with it.”

Agent for Notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement.

Transformative Use

All of these photographs were taken by paparazzi photographers and then assigned to BWP for licensing. Failing to request permission, BWP sued Gossip Cop for copyright infringement. Gossip Cop's defense? All together now, everyone: IT'S A TRANSFORMATIVE USE! As with all photographs, permission to use images is crucial. And you CAN use them under the following conditions ...

The following examples are provided as illustrations to the concept of permission.

District school board policies, acceptable use policies, or other forms in place should be the first line of direction for the educator collecting and using photographic images. These examples of forms are provided as an orientation to the spectrum of permission forms that can serve as potential models for content.

Unfortunately, some people either don't know or don't care about stealing (copyrighted) creative works.

To combat and help educate a thief, put a notice on every page of your website.

"All artwork © your name. Don't steal my art, it's not nice; it's also not legal."

AND THEN...

Register your entire body of work with the US Copyright Office. You can do this fairly inexpensively by combining works into groupings. Like by series, subject, year, or whatever, and pay the fee per submission of group. Instead of paying per individual piece.

Now, you already own the copyright, but the benefit of registering is that you can more easily fight cases of infringement. And win damages if you were to have a successful litigation. Not for a a thief who has no money but let's say Disney or Target, or someone who works for them, decides they want to rip you off and use your work on a tshirt. Believe me, you want to be registered. See case of Modern Dog vs. the big guys.

Read more:
Copyright Basics: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf
FAQ: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#automatic
electronic filing (cheaper): http://www.copyright.gov/eco/

Boycott Getty Images

Getty Images company is doing an internet sweep for 'illegally used' images and will threaten to sue you if you do not pay them exorbitant, over the top high 'damages' fees for each image use, rather than just give you a simple cease and desist or pay us the license fee--meaning it is an excuse for a money grab. They are being totally ruthless and do not care about the circumstances around the image use.
It is now not at all safe to use ANY image you get from the internet, even if it is listed as free to use, because you don't ever really know how it got there and Getty uses sophisticated tracking software that will find a licensed image even if you use just a tiny part of it or found it on a free site.
They are even checking internet archives for sites that have been taken down for years! Here is a website put up by a publisher and intellectual property rights attorney who is extremely familiar with this problem, for your education.
Getty is not going after the folks in India and elsewhere who steal images and use them in templates they sell--they are going after unsuspecting people in America that they can reach...and using a bazooka to do so.

Getty Images Settlement Letter "settlement fee" of $1,300 CAUTION

Countless unscrupulous web banner, template, and graphic designers from India (and other similar countries that habitually and deliberately disregard and violate copyrights) that profit by stealing licensed images and incorporating them into their "creations" (web templates, web banners, and web graphics) and reselling them to their customers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.

"Borrowing"
images off the web is no more legal
for a government agency than for anyone else.

Government agencies think it is not illegal for them to "borrow" images off the web for their use because it is for educational use and they are not a commercial organization. But they are wrong. Nonprofits and get this from authors all the time (mostly academics). They think it's fair use to use whatever images they want in their magazine articles because they're "teaching."

MOMA SAYS FAIR USE IS PERMITTED
Fair use of copyrighted material includes the use of protected materials for noncommercial educational purposes, such as teaching, scholarship, research, criticism, commentary, and news reporting. Unless otherwise noted, users who wish to download or print text, audio, video, image and other files from MoMA's Website for such uses are welcome to do so without MoMA's express permission. Users must cite the author and source of this material as they would material from any printed work; the citation should include the URL "http://www.moma.org".

What matters are the terms of use for the image. Granted, if you purchase rights to an image, being an educational organization or using the image for an "educational" market may lower the fee compared to other markets. Professionals respect copyright law (and don't intend to be the target of a potential lawsuit!).

A government client is insisting that it is not illegal for them to "borrow" images off the web for their use because it is for educational use and they are not a commercial organization.

FAIR USE NETWORK
"Internal use only it can be OK. But if it is for a public site or distributed documentation, then there are legal issues. The IG for each government agency has the specific rules and language for this. "
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
http://www.copyright.gov/
http://www.bitlaw.com/internet/webpage.htm
http://www.tipz.net/Copyrights.asp
best practices

Text Images
integrate text written on images

Integrate text written on images
Those persons who do their own website design will find TextImages most useful. Developed by Stefan Trost, this helpful tool allows users to integrate text written on images into their websites. Visitors can create single text images with this application, along with a wide range of pictures. Visitors also have the ability to precisely adjust the writing, design, format, style, colors, fonts, margins, and spacing as they see fit.The tool is particularly useful for those who want headings or other recurring text to look the same regardless of browser or available fonts. This version is compatible with Windows 7, XP, and Vista.

Protecting Your Images and Bandwidth
Image and bandwidth theft is running rampant on the web.

David Airey's article "How to deter thieves from stealing your images and server bandwidth". The technique is an addition to your .htaccess file in the root directory of your site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^ http://(.+\.)?yourwebsite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|jpg)$ /images/yourgraphic.jpeObviously, replace theboldedtext above with your website and your graphic. Notice the weird file extension on the graphic (jpe). This technique completely blocks regular images to be shown on third party websites at all, but the exception allows your custom graphic to be shown. One thing you could do that is borderline mean is to make your re-direct graphic like a 10,000px square red block, that's guaranteed to break some layouts.

Saving the Graphics You See on a ClipArt WebPage
PC - Place your Cursor over the Graphic. Click on it using the right side of your mouse. Then click on the left side of your mouse "Save Picture As" Save in selected folder and file name.

WATERMARK

While not a plugin, a technique I've used is to set the photo as the background and then place a watermark on top of it. Select any of the galleries at http://www.photographybyerbt.com/gallery/ to see this in action.

Basically the code for the image is...
<img id=3D"spring_dogwoods1" src=3D"/images/watermark_v.png" height=3D"504" = width=3D"360">
...with the id loading the actual photo into the background via css and the = src setting the watermark image on top. (Note, the css for the photo backgrounds is dynamically generated via PHP from a database...
So when new images are added, they automatically get included in the css). If a user prints the page or grabs a screenshot, they get the watermark on top of the photo. If they right click they get just the watermark. Granted, if they root through the code, they can get to the background photo...but if someone is that determined...

What pEOPLE uSE

Eric Kee and Hany Farid, "Detecting Photographic Composites of Famous People." Dartmouth Computer Science Technical Report TR2009-656, October 2010.
Abstract: Photos are commonly falsified by compositing two or more people into a single image. We describe how such composites can be detected by estimating a camera's intrinsic parameters. Differences in these parameters across the image are then used as evidence of tampering. Expanding on earlier work, this approach is more applicable to low-resolution images, but requires a reference image of each person in the photo as they are directly facing the camera. When considering composites of famous people, such a reference photo is easily obtained from an on-line image search.

You would be foolish to believe anything that you see:
"My belief," says Scott Kelby, president of the Florida-based National Association of Photoshop Professionals, "is that every single major magazine cover is retouched. I don't know how they couldn't be." But don't stop there. Aside from U.S. newspapers, most of which do not permit photos to be manipulated, it's quite possible that the vast majority of images seen in the public arena have been altered.

Protecting Film

Protecting Film Lead-lined bags, available from photo retailers, will weaken the x-radiation on film and reduce potential harm. However, the effectiveness of any particular lead bag depends on the intensity and electric potential of the X-ray generator, the lead's thickness, and the film speed. If you use a lead bag, check with the manufacturer for the effectiveness of their products with airport X-ray devices. The inspection process may be triggered by a lead bag on the scanner screen. In a typical airport surveillance situation, the baggage may be pulled aside for additional inspection.

New anti-piracy propaganda to run before movies, courtesy of FBI, ICE, and MPAA May 9, 2012
.digitaltrends.com/
Two new anti-piracy warnings will soon be added to select DVD and Blu-ray movies. The additional warnings come courtesy of a coalition of copyright infringement fighters that includes the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) wing, the FBI, and six member studios of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The first screen is a joint anti-piracy warning from the FBI and HSI, which says that, “The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by federal law enforcement agencies and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.”
A second warning baring the IPR Center's logo, includes the following :educational message": "Piracy is not a victimless crime. For more information on how digital theft harms the economy, please visit www.iprcenter.gov." The HSI is the government organization behind Operation in Our Sites, which aims to seize websites accused of copyright infringement, either through the distribution of intellectual property like music, movies, and TV shows, or through the sale of counterfeit goods. HSI has so far seized more than 760 domains. The organization boasts that this has led to the arrest or charing of 11 individuals for criminal copyright infringement, and the seizure of more than $1 million. These seizures have not all been above-board. Recently released court documents show that ICE held popular hip hop website Dajaz1.com for more than a year without a single scrap of evidence that it had been used to distribute copyrighted songs. The copyright industry asserts that piracy has cost the U.S. economy 360,000 jobs, $16 billion in lost wages, and $2.6 billion in lost taxes. More recent studies, however, show that revenue in the music, movie, video game, and book publishing industries has risen over the past few years.

Image Cached

FIND YOUR ART ONLINE

Multimedia Search Engines: Image, Audio & Video Searching Find your art online. Research the Robots who scour the net looking for your art to add to websites without your permission.

tineye.com can help you search and find copies of your image on the net.

Prevent your site pictures from getting cached in the their image search engines

NOIMAGEINDEX prevents that page from appearing in the AltaVista Image Search index but the page can still show up in the main AltaVista index.

My advice would be to place the following <meta> tag in the <HEAD> of any document linked from an outside source, as well as the index page ("home" page) of your site, and the index page of each of your sub-directories:
<meta name="robots" content ="noimageindex">

Apache Server Webmasters can Protect your bandwidth with a simple .htaccess file uploaded to your main directory.

Bandwidth theft is also a big problem for those with free graphics sites. As long as you own your own domain, or your free host allows you to upload .htaccess files, preventing direct linking is a very simple thing to do.

You upload a txt file which you name .htaccess . On the text file, add these lines:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

Change nothing in the above lines except for your domain name. Upload the text file, named .htaccess, to your main directory. It's that easy. As long as your host supports mod rewrite, no one will be able to direct link to your .gif or .jpg images!!!

SEARCH ENGINE REMOVAL

If the web host is located in the USA then the hosting company is bound by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §§ 512, 1201-1205, 1301-1332; 28 U.S.C. § 4001) and all United States web service providers are required not to facilitate in the publication of infringing material.

If the infringing content is hosted overseas you cannot use a DMCA removal request, but you can report the infringing page with the Google report a spam result web form. You may not be able to have the infringing content removed, but you may be able to have the pages removed from the Google web index.

NOW GET IT REMOVED

Standard Removal Procedure:
Robots Exclusion Standard. In order to have your images removed from search engines we require that you create a robots.txt file using the Robots Exclusion Protocol to indicate which files you want excluded.

In order to employ a robots.txt file, you or your Webmaster need to have access to your Web site's hosting server. Robots Exclusion Standard and its practice

GNU robots exclusion

You must stipulate the following user-agent in your robots.txt file to disallow Y image crawlers from accessing your specific directories or image files: example below

User-agent: Yahoo-MMCrawler
Disallow: /gallery
Disallow: /graphics
Disallow: /images

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*

Once you have placed this file at the root level of your hosting server, Yahoo!'s image crawlers will no longer access those files or directories you have stipulated. Please note, however, that it can take several weeks before your block may take effect in our index depending upon when you first implement your robots.txt file.

Immediate Removal for Legal Cause:

If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, please provide Yahoo!'s Copyright Agent the following information:

an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property interest;
a description of the copyrighted work or other intellectual property that you claim has been infringed;
a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site;
your address, telephone number, and email address;
a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright or intellectual property owner, its agent, or the law;
a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright or intellectual property owner or authorized to act on the copyright or intellectual property owner's behalf.

GOOGLE -- Report alleged copyright infringement FROM GOOGLE

YAHOO - Agent for Notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement can be reached as follows:

Example: DCMA Notification Copyright Infringement Report
mail to c/o Yahoo! Inc.
Copyright Agent
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
[p] (408) 349-5080 fax:(408) 349-7821
By email: copyright@yahoo-inc.com

In addition to submitting your legal request for immediate removal, we also require that you follow our Standard Removal Procedure and employ a robots.txt file to ensure that your files are not accessed by our crawlers in the future.

RESOURCES

Graphic Artist's Guild
212-463-7730
11 West 20th Street, 8th Floor New York, NY
10011-3704

ArtsJournal offers is a daily summary, with links to the complete articles from print publications or Internet magazines, of what its editor and founder, Douglas McLennan, deems the most important high-arts articles in the worldwide English-language press.

Arts and Letters Daily - covers what newspapers cover: art thefts, orchestras going under, music downloading, theater companies building new buildings and the like. For an intellectual and academic readership.

Flagrant Disregard
features several similar applications where you can make: Magazine Covers Trading Cards Badges Movie Posters ... and a lot of other cool things. Make your own "Motivator" Style Posters, with any photograph you choose, featuring your own pithy quotes

wEBSITES TO SELL YOUR PHOTO'S ONLINE

PicScout - ImageExchange: ID images, connect to licensors, find license type, pricing and image details.

http://smugmug.com Smugmug allows photographers to sell photo prints and http://1x.com are popular among photographers.

ImageMagick: compare program to mathematically and visually annotate the difference between an image and its reconstruction.

Make a free Website to discuss your art and point to your professionally made site to boost your product.