Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Prevent Art Theft & Save Bandwidth

Point one: A lot of people on RPR put a lot of effort into making their own pictures, or contracting people to draw for them. Recently I hear the mods had some trouble and had to thump art thieves. Real easy solution, as long as the coding allows it: Allow a user to toggle on "No right click". From there, take the lower bar and have it read, upon hover, one of two things: Either the Description tagged to the picture, or a disclaimer outright saying "No use of this image". Currently it displays the URL, which allows a simple rightclick-copylocation-paste-save.

Moving towards point two: That or worse. Someone could theoretically go to my profile, right click copy location, and paste it into a profile somewhere else--not only stealing my art but leeching your bandwidth and ultimately raising server costs. If one took the above idea and applied it, and kept people from looking at the source code, the way it launches into new frames could readily prevent the stealing of a URL.

Do you still want your users to be able to link to the pictures outside, themselves? Then tell them in the "Edit" section what the URL is, rather than letting the public see it. If they happen to go to an unrelated chatroom, get seen with it and get leeched/stolen from that's seperate, but it could at least control the potential of direct thieving in the future.

Just random thoughts.";

Speaking as an artist, this sounds like a lot of fuss and bother. I want people to be able to see what images I have in all their full glory. Yes, there is a risk of theft. But that risk exists regardless like it does on say, deviantart or many other kinds of website.

And right-click - save can be easily circumvented by print-screening a page, by the way.

I'm afraid I have to agree with that.

I've been on the internet as an artist for over a decade now. I've tried all the above and people still stole images from my site.

I've found that personal sites and profile sites aren't the problem. It's sites like e621.net and galleries like FA/DA that are the actual source of most art theft, as well as Google Images. Nothing you can do will prevent people from saving your work if you put it online somewhere. The best way to not have your art stolen is by never publishing it online.

People can go very far. Yeun had not only the artwork I drew for her stolen, but also her NAME, her Furcadia colors and description. I changed the image they were linking to (on my site) to a nasty STD infected genital area and had the guardians remove the alt. I can guarantee you this person will not steal from me again.

Water-marking might help. I don't know if there is a way to have a watermark put on RPR images, but I think it would help here.

One could always make their own watermark- I did it once or twice, though I'm not sure how "well" I made it in the first place. I'm not accustomed to doing it, honestly.

Then of course there's "But what if the art you have is a gift/commish?"... to my knowledge, a lot if not most commissioning artists will watermark their image in some form or another, and I have a hunch that those who gave you art as gifts wouldn't mind going back and doing one for your image(s)-- I got such an offer at one point myself, as a matter o' fact.

...If someone ever steals my art/one of my alts, that sounds like a traumatisingly good idea.

There is no way to prevent people from seeing the source code of a page. There are ways to make it take a few extra clicks to do so, but that's it. To get it to display on their computer screen, they are sent the HTML. That's just how the internet works.

And no matter what we do, we can't prevent screen shots, which would invalidate all the fuss. I know everyone wants to prevent art theft, but there is literally no way to do that on the internet except to educate people and/or not put anything on the internet.

You can easily add a watermark to your images with a free graphics package like GIMP. Be aware that a skilled Photoshop user can also remove nearly any watermark, unless you obscure your image so completely it's almost not worth showing people at all. It will reduce the pool of people who are capable of stealing your image, but not eliminate it. I've also seen images stolen complete with watermark and "DO NOT USE" notices right on the picture, and reuse without alterations.

I understand it can be gotten around. Print screen, whatever. But if you make it take more steps, the lazy thieves are more easily deterred. That's what it is half the frickin' time anyway. What, design my own character concept? Why do that when I can google "Fantasy elf girl", or browse other people's profiles for an idea? Lazy people make lazy thieves, never underestimate what putting a few barricades up can do to trim the numbers, even if not eliminating it.

Right-click is especially useful for things other than copying image urls. There is nothing I hate more than disabled right clicks on a site. They may be an extra step, but really, the majority of people who go as far as purposefully stealing images from a character profile page are not lazy. They steal with purpose. RPR isn't Google Images where you search for a keyword and there are thousands of results to choose from.

Disabling right click has never worked for me, there might be 1 out of 200 thieves who will be repelled by it and considering the remaining functions of rightclick, I don't think the pro of stopping that one thief outweighs the cons of having to miss the rest of the rightclick features. That's just my opinion though.

I think you may be over estimating the protections provided by inconvenience, and as Sanne points out, it inconveniences everyone, not just thieves. Further, implementing these things will be another script for users to download. People on slow connections will have to wait that much longer to see pages. And to get around it, all thieves need to is disable javascript in their browser. And it sends the message to the vast majority of users who are perfectly reasonable and law-abiding that we view them as criminals.

Besides, if it's hit Google Images, it's over already. Nothing you do can stop people from saving stuff off Google.

Being treated like criminals is one of the biggest complaints I see when the entertainment industry goes way over the top with DRM and their quest to stop piracy, it ends up hurting the genuine customers and does nothing really to slow down the actual pirates.

I do want to point out that I fully understand your concerns, but experience has given me the opinion I shared. I and many other artists who had their own sites used to disable right-clicking to prevent theft, but it only seemed to encourage people to steal our stuff even more somehow. Nobody is trying to downplay the importance of protecting our art, but these methods just don't work as well as we'd like them to.

Furthermore the theft issue that arose previously was something of a grand-scale, someone who put so much effort into stealing that they even stole an identity. And the theft happened outside of RPR to begin with, RPR was just used as a tool to keep information stored on.

As an artist I've come to accept that I just can't win beforehand. If people really want my art, they will get it somehow. I can only do something once they've stolen it. That's a harsh reality unfortunately. When that happens, I play by the rules and take (sometimes long) steps to have the art taken down and this person punished. I've never been stolen from twice by the same individual, and that's because I make sure they feel the consequences of this action. And once people figure out how you deal with your art being stolen, they are less likely to try.

As I said before, the best way to protect your art is by not publishing it. If it is published, in my opinion it should be accepted that there's always a chance of it being stolen. I wish it wasn't like that, but it is for as far as I can see.

There's a sentence that fits here very well: "If it's on the internet it belongs to everyone."

And that's the harsh truth no matter how wrong it is. Something on the internet can be taken by anyone without too much effort. There are million dollar companies putting loads of cash in preventing piracy and they still fail, so I doubt you can stop people from taking art from sites that display them with a few scripts.

Like Sanne said, the best protection is to not put it on the internet. It's a fantastic medium but at the same time a horrible one as it lets people take whatever they want without effort or paying a price.

I disagree. It doesn't belong to anyone but who created the art, the person who holds worldwide legal copyright over the images. Just because I post my artwork on a site doesn't mean it's automatically yours, or anyone who happens to see or save it. It's still mine.

But I can't really prevent anyone from using it, I can only punish them severely for doing so. There's a huge difference. I hope I didn't give off the impression that I think the art can belong to anyone.

That's only as true as saying "If it's on a store shelf, it belongs to everyone." I can put candy in my pockets at a sweet shop without too much trouble, too. I'm still stealing and I can still be punished for it, even if it was easy to do.

You did not, but that is a rule on the internet people should really learn. It's like "If you jump from the top of a building, you'll fall down and die." It's how the internet works, people see stuff, they think "Oh that's pretty" right click and save. Heck, msot people don't steal art on purpose, they do'nt give it a second thought. They're just on the internet looking at pretty pictures, they like one, they save it, use it somewhere else, it spreads, suddenly everyone has it. Not because that first person thought "Ohohohoho, art, imma steal it!" but "Pretty! Right click and save! ^.^" because it's so easy to do that on the internet a lot of people don't give it a second thought. So if you don't want your pictures to spread like that and I'm pretty sure you're all aware how the internet works don't post them, because "When it's on the internet it belongs to everyone" does apply, once it spreads you can't stop it.

Fine example, I was looking for an avatar for me and had just watched back to the future, the end titling was pretty neat and said "To Be Continued" so I was all "To google!" moments later I found myself a neat picture, right clicked save as and it is where it is now. Sue'ing me over using it would be silly because it's all over the internet, everyone has it, it's spread, gone, can't stop it. It's on the internet it belongs to everyone.

That's what I thought you meant, TBC.

Essentially, yeah, if it pops up on Google, people will likely assume it is free to use. Once upon a time I thought that when I first ventured into the land of the internet, why would it otherwise be so easily accessible? And then I learned otherwise!
And then there are the few that really just don't give a damn even if it says in big ol' bold letters, DO NOT USE.

That's called copyright infringement. Just because a lot of people do something, doesn't mean it's right. Lots of people illegally download music, movies, games and all sorts. Just because it's on the internet, it's not theirs to own.

I post my work online knowing full well that someone could easiyl steal and post it on other sites. That doesn't make it theirs. It's still my work and if I were to discover that happening, you can bet I would be going after them.

I think a better phrase is "If it's on the internet, everyone uses it." That much is true, and I think we can all agree that it happens, even though it's not right.

Insisting that it "belongs" to everyone is the sort of semantics that's going to get everyone worked up unnecessarily.

But back to the original point of this thread: The pitfalls of disabling right clicking and similar precautions vastly outweigh the benefits. I will not be adding this feature.