Things You Can Do To Protect Your Blog Images From Being Stolen

Creating images for your blog is something that usually takes a lot of time effort and hard work. Therefore, it can be pretty annoying and very upsetting when you one day discover that somebody has stolen your images and posted them elsewhere as their very own. In fact, if you are not careful some people may just end up thinking that it is you who stole the images and it may not be easy to prove otherwise.

Fortunately, with just a little effort, there are ways for you to protect your work. Most people are not aware of them but there are combinations of techniques you can use to protect your blog images from being stolen.

Ask them to remove it:

The most obvious first step that you can take is contact sites where you find your photos and images and ask them to remove them. You will be surprised how many times this simple easy to implement step works. It is the easiest thing to do and it will certainly not take up too much of your time to simply send an email to the image thief site.

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Make Use Of The DMCA Digital Millennium Copyright Act:

If your polite request has been ignored, the next thing to do is file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice. You will need to provide detailed information, which is part of proving that the image actually belongs to you. The notice will also include a statement swearing that what you are saying is true and that the image actually belongs to you. Details of the site where your image has been republished will also be required.

A DMCA take down request arriving at the hosting company that hosts the offending site is usually enough to do the trick because legally the host will have no option but to remove the image.

The only down side here is that if you have to do this frequently it can easily end up being a lot of time-consuming work. Therefore, what you need are deterrents that will stop the image thieves in their tracks.

Will disabling the right click option work To Fully Protect Your Images?

Some sites disable the right click option to protect their images. However, this will also end up inconveniencing other visitors to your site who use this facility in other ways, and who no intentions of using your images elsewhere. Besides there are easy ways round this obstacle meaning that you will be annoying your visitors while not fully protecting your images. It is a better idea to use other available tools and techniques as deterrents.

Break up your images:

There is a technique known as slice and dice which is pretty effective. The image will still look okay on your blog but the minute somebody tries to copy it, they will end up with just a part of it and not the whole image as they would have expected. While it is possible to copy and assemble all the pieces it is usually not worth the time or effort for those out to quickly copy images from other sites and so the most likely thing they will do is try their luck elsewhere.

Mark your images:

Watermarks on your images also work extremely well. Not only does this discourage thieves but also in the event that somebody still uses the image it still works in your favor because what they are doing is advertising your blog to their audiences. Another advantage here is that putting watermarks on images is fairly easy.

Shrink wrapping will annoy image thieves:

Imagine a situation where when image thieves download your image they find that it is actually the wrong image. They repeat the same process with a different photograph and the same thing happens. All this is made possible by a process called shrink-wrapping. Again, a simple process can go a long way in protecting the images on your blog.

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Conclusion:

You can use a tool called TinEye, which will enable you to quickly find sites that have used your images. When you combine this with two or three other deterrents described in this article, you will be able to make your images virtually copy-proof. It is well worth the small effort in putting in place measures to protect your work.