As a professional photographer, would you pay to have the web scanned for unauthorized usage of your photos ?
By Yahoo User • Category: Copyrights LawsuitRegarding automated online image tracking, considering that we already have some well established companies doing automated online image copyright monitoring (eg. http://picscout.com/, http://ideeinc.com) but aiming for huge clients (corbis, getty, jupiter), how big do you believe the demand for a free or low-cost service would be? Does it even make sense to offer such a service to low-end image owners like amateur photographers ? (since it’s unlikely that they will have the resources or interest to go after copyright infringments/lawsuits).
i think you have already answered the question,other factors: its unlikely amateur images would end up being used by say pepsi or coke or such (they are the ones worth suing)how much would/could you make out of ametuers?if your clever and can design something better at it than what the corbis and such like use now then your really onto something!a
Pretty worthless really. Most folks using someone elses images will likely have no money to get even if you took them to court so why would anyone bother. Look at reality, very large corporation like Playboy probably have their images used more than any amateur could ever dream of… and do you see them wasting their time and money going after anyone? And that assume you could actually create software that could actually work. In general if your image contains a digital watermark and the person uses the exact file then you will easily find that on the net but if you have an image and I download it, all I have to do is change the compression ratio slightly or crop it slightly and a computerized search engine comparing pictures wont catch it. Sure its easy for a human to look at two pictures that are just compressed slightly different and see that they are the same image but a computer can’t do that. Computers are looking for the same files no the same images.Most of these services that you mention can only catch the idiots that don’t bother to change the images even slightly, and photographers that use them are just getting duped into believing that they are now protected when they aren’t… so is it better to know you could be a victim or to believe that your safe when your not.
The chances of images being taken for home use are great but for used in national magazines and stuff is low, ( I wish a major advertising company would steal one of mine, major lawsuit). So if most people would just put their water mark on their low resolution image when posting….. oh well all that somebody can print is a wallet size photo with a water mark in it or a badly touched up version.So to your answer… No.Hope that helps,Kevin