Hi all, I usually don't post stuff too often unless I have a question or can answer somebody elses but, lately I have noticed ALOT of what I call Image Hijackers posting others work as thier own. Now, maybe its because I have been involved in this kinda stuff for along time or maybe I am just geting better at identifing artists but, it seems to me that this is actually getting to be a problem here. Now, the mods have been great about lookin into the ones I call their attention too and I usually never see them again...This is a good thing. I also noticed many of the members make comments on the offending member's image stating that its a stolen image...this is good too...but perhaps we need a specific mod or mods that deal with this stuff? It pisses me off when I see it and I know it does everyone else too. I guess I am just wondering what can be done about this activity. cuz I basically just goto the MAX forum (thats where I pretty much hang out) and message Mpls OiBoi and let him/her (not sure...LOL) know whats happening...It gets taken care of on Rosity but I also noticed that many of the offending members have personal sites with the stuff posted for download there...does that get taken care of or what? And as for the artists that the offending member ripped off...are they informed (if they are known?) Feel free to add to this cuz I'll read it and maybe learn a bit more about this sad subject.....

I, and a few others here and at 3DC have been hunting these people 'Snaggers' down for quite awhile now. All we can really do is inform the artist who's work is being stolen, writing letters to the infringer and/or the website host informing her/him that they are commiting copyright infringment...etc. etc.. The only one who can legally claim copyright infringment however is the true artist of course,{or their agent} but scare tactics have worked pretty well in the past ;) If you come across a work that you know for a fact has been posted by someone who is not the original artist, inform the true creator first and make sure that they did/didn't give permission for their work to be freely distributed, and for the fact that they might not realize their work is being stolen. If you know for certain that the work wasn't used with permission, still contact the creator first, but then you can also help write letters to the webhost, or offending party. {if asked would be better} Most artists who's work has been stolen will appreciate the help and heads-up :) ~Jani :)

~Jani

Renderosity Community Admin
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I hate people that rip others off! What the hell can they get out of it?! Which has been a fear of mine for more than a year, I've beemna member of this site for a while and there is alot hard work put in by the artists here, and because i know how much work it takes, thats an even bigger and discouraging factor in regards to posting personal work here or anywhere else. I recently spoke with one of the very popular artist who has a gallery here about "Art Theft" I guess his advice made me feel a little better, because you can't watch everyone, but as a community we should blow the whistle whenever we see this stuff happening. My advice as well is to place your copyright/signature watermark style on your image so that it can't be cropped out. I think this may make it a bit more difficult for the crooks in our community.

Hawkfyr also suggested creating a transparency overlay layer on images, so that when it gets 'snagged'/right-clicked, all they get is the transparent layer :D...nothing will stop them of course, but as a community maybe we can slow them down :) ~Jani :)

~Jani

Renderosity Community Admin
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But you can't put a layer like that on jpgs... and because of the size limitations, most people can only post jpgs of their work on the 'Net. The Save for Web option in PhotoShop flattens everything it considers non-essential. Carolly

If you see a "snagged" image, just IM a mod or admin, letting us know what the image's URL is, and where the original can be found. If it's in an area that we're not in charge of, then we'll post a notice in the Mod area so it gets dealt with as quickly as possible. Thanks!

To get this transparent layer above the image you need to create a table and insert the image as tablebackground. Then you can click into the table and put a transparent Gif above. But I am not sure if every browser supports table backgrounds? Slicing images is a good idea too but you can do whatever you want someone will always find a way to steal anyway :-(.

Every organisation rests upon a mountain of secrets ~ Julian Assange

OK, thanks! I'm creating a website now (finally) and that has been one of the worries holding me back.

Attached Link: http://penguinisto.serverpro2.com

Most colocators (the decent ones) have ways of preventing hotlinking. I suggest you take full advantage of it... it will help you greatly in the bandwidth department For example, try and hotlink to one of my humble images, and you wind up at goatse.cx, looking at a picture of some guy stretching his rectum out to the approximate diameter of a diesel engine exhaust pipe. Trust me, I already got a bit hate mail over it (evil grin.) If you want a copy of my .htaccess file, you;re welcome to it. Serverpro (my colo) also includes some active hotlink protections as well. A second item that helps is to watermark the images - GIMP (a real sweet Photoshop clone that you can get for free) has the ability to not only watermark an image (inserts your copyright infor throughout the picture), but to comment the image with your name and trademark... Thirdly, if you find a site stealing your pix, contact the thief's upstream ISP... the theif's site will usually go down and stay down until your work is removed. It only takes a few minutes, and the author learns a painful lesson (esp. sicne bandwidth ain't cheap these days.) Punkti - the only problem with a table background is that I can still snitch the image from my browser cache; most browsers do support table backgrounds, and it does stop hot-linking only a little - it doesn't take too much work to discover where the original image is :o There are ways and scripts to scramble the names of your images, then scripts to create html and thumbnail pages of the results - do it at least once a month and the leeches end up with broken links quite often. :) HTH a little, /P

Last week one of my friends here at Renderosity alerted me to a site somewhere in South America. Not only were my images chewed up and spit out in some horrid format that I dispised I had to try and deal with the issue in Spanish. Seems as if the images that my friend alerted me to were "made" for her for profit to use on her site. Grr.....that really pissed me off. She then gave me the web address of the web set designer and low and behold, images of mine, LisaB, LaurieS, Sinamin's and more that I recognized but could ID the artist. It's gone beyond just snagging an image..it's using the image for profit as well. Dang em all! Email me for the web addresses if you want to check to see if your stuff is there. I choose not to drag someone through the mud even though they are guilty as hell.

For example, try and hotlink to one of my humble images, and you wind up at goatse.cx, looking at a picture of some guy stretching his rectum out to the approximate diameter of a diesel engine exhaust pipe Oh God...I could'a done without that mind visual...~lol~

~Jani

Renderosity Community Admin
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Yep, Peng, that's right - as I said before, someone who really wants it will always find a way to steal images - this is just a way to make it not so easy. Editing the .htaccess is pretty cool ... hehe, did that myself and it works pretty well but that won't stop stealing images by right click and save either. If people just would respect other people's copyright.

Every organisation rests upon a mountain of secrets ~ Julian Assange

"but that won't stop stealing images by right click and save either" You can disable both of these using JS / HTML, and also the auto-pop-up save toolbar in IE6+. In fact, despite what people say, it IS possible to COMPLETELY prevent images being grabbed from the net, even by PrintScrn, but the user interface it would demand would not be worth the while (probably).

I have disabled right clicking and all my images are sliced and they are all on different HTML pages that all open without menue- and status bar and stuff but I swear, as soon as somebody comes around with a different browser than IE it's over with protecting your images this way. I know it, I have those other browsers as well. You can make it as difficult as possible and there are some who will give up and others that won't :-(.

Every organisation rests upon a mountain of secrets ~ Julian Assange

Punkti's right, Tuttle... there's no real fool-proof method to protect your images... For instance, I don't have Internet Explorer on my machine at home... Linux doesn't come with IE for some odd reason :p Even the porn industry, with it's top-notch methods of security and anti-piracy, cannot completely stop the images from finding their way onto newsgroups and competing websites.* The best you can hope for is to slow it down, to make it tough enough for the theif that he/she decides to throw up their hands and look for easier targets. PS: Jumpstartme2, if you think the mental image is bad, you should see the picture... that guy really could fit a diesel pipe in there... ) /P *Seriously - the porn site ops are usually the 'go-to' place if you want to learn how to seriously secure your site and intellectual property... online porn is a cut-throat business (most of 'em don't spam, contrary to popular belief.) Because they don't quite get the FBI pampering that a Fortune 500 company gets WRT network break-ins, they've learned to protect themselves. Therefore, the porn sites usually have fellowships and admin 'networks', where the best and brightest in security and anti-theft tips and techniques are pioneered and put to use. If I was to hire a security admin and he had an online porn company in his resume, I'd consider that a HUGE plus.

Yes, I admit that with HTML / JS etc. you'd need to create code for every browser, and I don't know enough about most of them (other than Netscape, IE and Opera) to say if it's possible or not. But if you used Java to display your images then it would be browser-independant anyway, and with a bit of trickery you can prevent anything, including screen-grabs. Not that my stuff is worth the effort. Now, I'm just off to a porn site to do some security research... ;)

I'm not so sure, myself - I've used Irfanview to do scree-caps of even the most impossible graphics inconsistencies. I know a bit about the porn sites because I once lent freelance technical work towards setting quite a few of them up (it pays real well, too - getting a $10k check for two weeks worth of worth of work is rather nice, to say the least.) Point is, if you think it would be tough to secure, say, a bank's online checking component, then you ain't seen tough yet. the bank only has to worry about one axis of threat. OTOH, there are zillions of horny little script kiddies and competent crackers just dying to post a backdoor into your site (and pass it around), to leech your bandwidth (for their own "l33t pr0n s1t3"), or just to steal all the images that your sysop paid thousands upon thousands of dollars in royalties for. There is also that other matter of crackers wanting all those customer credit card numbers you have on file, too... Not that most folks would pity a porn site sysop... there's a huge potential in cash to be made. OTOH, 90% of those starting such a site will go bankrupt in their first six months... mostly due to some kiddie breaking in to their site and gutting it empty. OTOH, when you consider that a good porn site sysop makes as much per annum as the CIO of a Fortune 500 company, and that the largest sites have a P/E ratio that would put many Fortune 500 companies to shame, you can see why there's no shortage of people wanting to get a piece of it. A medium sized site will have roughly 5,000 - 15,000 active customers, each paying roughly $20.00 or so per month... bandwidth is a mother, costing the most at around $8.00 per customer per month. Security staff, measures and software eats second place, followed by royalties (unless you do your own photoshoots, in which case you have to pay the models, the photographer, and a lawyer to keep proof of age and other legal paperwork on file for you. It's much cheaper to buy your photosets, even if you don't get exclusivity. Buying 'em instead of shooting 'em also saves you from criminal liability if one of those models do turn out to be underaged, even if she/he gave you a fake ID.) Quite frankly, I'd love to get back into being an admin at a porn site... but although the pay is fantastic, the employment isn't exactly steady unless you work at one of the larger sites. My wife would also protest pretty vehemently as well, money be damned (I was still single back then). /P