At 12:07 AM 7/22/2001 +1000, Rob Geraghty wrote:
>I note there's been some discussion of copyright lately. I just uploaded a
>stack of new pictures to my website, and it's taken quite a while to process
>them all. On the larger images I've put "(c) Rob Geraghty 2001" where the
>(c) is the proper copyright symbol. I've also marked each picture using
>Digimarc watermarking, which is built into Paintshop Pro. The watermarking
>works OK on larger images (like 1024x768) but makes smaller images (320x200)
>really poor. It makes the images look like they've used a higher level of
>compression than they have. I guess 320x200 is so small that nobody could
>do much with it, but it's also too small to put the text copyright message
>in.
>
>Has anyone else tried this sort of thing? If you want to see what the
>images look like they're on and click on the Stories link
>in the index at the top, then the link to the story about Airlie Beach.
>They've all been scanned using a Nikon LS30 scanner with Vuescan. This is
>the argumentative film which Vuescan's dust and scratch filtering doesn't
>seem to work on.
>
>I'd be interested to hear the comments of others on the subject of
>copyrighting images for web publication.
>
>Rob
I do something similar on my website ( ). I wrote a
Perl script that takes the original TIFF file, plus a text file with info
for the database, and produces two JPEGs--one for a thumbnail and a larger
one to display when someone clicks on the thumbnail. Both images are
produced in 72ppi density. The larger one has some framing that contains a
copyright notice. The thumbnail doesn't, because as you've noted, there
really isn't room. Although I use PSP, also I don't bother with the
Digimarc watermarking, because it is not that hard to break (or so I've
been told) and I think degrades the image somewhat. With small (200x200 or
400x400) images at 72ppi I'm not too worried about someone stealing the
image and producing a magazine spread or calendar layout. In addition to
the copyright notice on the larger image, there is a copyright notice on
the entire site noting that all images are copyrighted by me unless
otherwise marked. (For example, I have a picture of me taking a picture on
the front page. That photo was taken by friend and fellow photographer Gary
Hall. I have his copyright notice on it and a link to his website.)
Finally, I register all my images with the copyright office by periodically
sending a CD containing JPEGs to them. This allows me to recover actual
plus punitive damages plus attorney's fees in the event of infringement
(more than $100,000). This is really important, because without
registration you can only recover actual damages, which are like to be
fairly small--just the income you lost by the perpetrator stealing your
photo rather than licensing it from you. I haven't experienced infringement
yet, but I'm told by those who have that virtually all infringers will
gladly pay your triple licensing fee in accordance with ASMP and EP
practice rather than chance a suit over a registered image.
Stan
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Photography by Stan McQueen:
