Online photo storage

[LStoner]

I need some advice please. Does anybody know the best place or way to store photos online for sharing with friends, but still be able to keep your photos copyrighted? I want to remove my photos from where they are because I found out one was taken and put on a website without my permission. Apparantly where I have them is not a safe place.

If anybody has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks so much in advance.

-Lee Ann

[bluepeter 26]

Hi
maybe you could share the name of the 'unsafe site', as maybe its where mine are! I use (currently, but slightly worried) http://community.webshots.com/user/bluepeter26

[Rhys]

If you spend money and go to freevirtualservers.com then you can put all your photos on your very own website and allow password-onlyu entry to certain areas of the site. I use fvs for my own site (with a domain mask)

[David Metsky]

Your photos are copyrighted as soon as you take them, you can't lose that. Once you put things online, you lose physical control of them to some degree. If I can display an image on my screen, I can get a copy of it. The web may make it very hard to enforce your copyright, but you haven't lost it.

If you really want to prevent people from sharing them without your permission, don't put them online, or put your copyright notice embedded in the image.

Having said that, if you want only authorized users to view your images you'll have to use a service like Webshots that allows you to keep Private photo albums. You can give other specific Webshots users the ability to view them, but they'll have to log in to Webshots and create accounts. You can designate who gets to see the images that way.

[LStoner]

Here's some more info on my situation. I'm in a Fan Club and we all take photos at the concerts of the artist. We like to share them for personal use by using sites like Imagestation, Shutterfly, etc.

I think the person who used my photo for another website is a fellow fan club member. If I share a password for the whole fan club than anybody in the fan club who isn't so nice could still take and steal the photos.

I know that there are ways to disable the right-click and save as feature on a photo displayed on a website, I just don't know how to do it.

So I guess it comes down to this. I have to decide if sharing with my fellow fan club members is worth some of my pics being taken and used for other things. I also wouldn't want those pics to fall into the wrong hands to someone who is trying to make a buck off of them. I've seen people on Ebay selling pics of this particular artist and I know they aren't supposed to do that whether or not they are someone else's or their own. The laws get real touchy there.

Thanks for advice. I think that it really comes down to me sharing or not sharing. I'll have to weigh the pros and cons and decide that on my own.

-Lee Ann

P.S. If I do share my pics, even on Imagestation, if I have a watermark in the corner of each pic does that protect them?

[judge9847]

I know that there are ways to disable the right-click and save as feature on a photo displayed on a website, I just don't know how to do it.
Yes, that is true. But it's the simplest of things to get round it. As David says, if it can be displayed it can be copied.


So I guess it comes down to this. I have to decide if sharing with my fellow fan club members is worth some of my pics being taken and used for other things. I also wouldn't want those pics to fall into the wrong hands to someone who is trying to make a buck off of them. I've seen people on Ebay selling pics of this particular artist and I know they aren't supposed to do that whether or not they are someone else's or their own. The laws get real touchy there.
Well, that's true as well. But by taking the sort of images that you and your friends are, you may very well be breaking copyright too. If you're in the States then the law there says that you must have the written permission of whoever it is you're photographing to do so. It's very difficult to police but prosecutions are made from time to time. The saving grace is that images that are posted to the web generally speaking do not make good prints: that's down to the resolution issue that's been discussed on this forum before.


P.S. If I do share my pics, even on Imagestation, if I have a watermark in the corner of each pic does that protect them?
Not really. Again it's not that difficult to get round and almost any photo editing package will help you get rid of them. I would imagine the watermarking David is talking about is electronic. It allocates unique numbers and identifiers to every image you tell it to and then, if someone pinches one off a web page for instance, the electronic detail is also taken. But it is very, very expensive. If you're really interested, I'll either dig out the name of one of the companies that do it commercially or someone else here can advise you off the top of their heads!

I'm not at all sure that's going to help resolve your problem but it's some more information for you.

[LStoner]

Thanks for the additional info. As far as us as fans breaking copyright rules, we've got that covered. This particular artist allows cameras into his concerts so we can take pics. He even has a fan photo contest every month put on by his fan club. There aren't too many artists left out there that will actually allow cameras into the concerts. We are all very grateful that he lets us do this.

Thanks for the offer of the electronic stamping, but it would probably just be easier to not put my pics up on a website before I do that.

Someone suggested www.picturetrail.com to me. Does anybody know anything about this website?

-Lee Ann