How can they prove you stole an image?



stock.xchng is now owned by getty - boycott it.

And there is technology to read images no matter if shaded, cropped, or inverted in some way. It is called picscout.com. Again working for and now owned by getty.

See a pattern here?

And this is part of the reason I use anon domain registration.
 
Shit, I didn't know these things can be invisible. Well looks I got my answer.

+rep

/thread

I suggest you look into "metadata". You can get timestamps, gps coordinates, and a whole lot of other information about an image depending on the kinds of information embedded upon creation.

If you haven't figured it out yet, you can theoretically spread viruses through images as well. There's been a couple of documented cases of this since 2005. FB back in December was the largest of these.
 
Shit, I didn't know these things can be invisible. Well looks I got my answer.

+rep

/thread

Digital watermarks can be changed or removed all together with Photoshop. It's really only an issue if the images has been licensed on limited release or only some sites, you nicked it and someone found out and reported you. Sites selling images do so to hundreds of thousands of site, no way to tell which was bought or copied.

Having said that, if you decide to help yourself, do change the image size or something else in it, G images database can tell duplicate from that data, especially if you don't provide credit.
 
I avoided istock for a long ass time, but finally gave in. I have to admit, they pretty much have a perfect everything for anything.

My question is though, how the hell would they know if I found that image elsewhere without the watermark?
 
TinEye Reverse Image Search is good at finding duplicates... this tool is now in every copyright holders arsenal.... distort, filter, resize, rotate, flip tinyeye couldn't care less and this technology will only get better.

Couldn't you just use that tool to find stock images without the watermark?

Edit: Yes lol you can, I just did. So...how can istock know if you are the original purchaser or not?
 
Couldn't you just use that tool to find stock images without the watermark?

Edit: Yes lol you can, I just did. So...how can istock know if you are the original purchaser or not?

They can 'shoot first, ask later' by sending the lawsuit to you and then you have to present/defend yourself against their claims.

Getty is absolutely notorious for this. getty images lawsuit - Google Search (Google: getty images lawsuit) Browse a few results to see how they operate.
 
TinEye Reverse Image Search is good at finding duplicates... this tool is now in every copyright holders arsenal.... distort, filter, resize, rotate, flip tinyeye couldn't care less and this technology will only get better.

Interesting, but doesn't seem to be able to track modified images. I just tried 10 images that I took and modified, and it couldn't find any duplicates or sources.
 
I use this

Code:
inurl:istock "keyword"

returns all istock images, it's helpful
 
TinEye Reverse Image Search is good at finding duplicates... this tool is now in every copyright holders arsenal.... distort, filter, resize, rotate, flip tinyeye couldn't care less and this technology will only get better.

It's pretty sophisticated. I actually think Google's "search by image" is more advanced.

However, neither of them can detect copies once they've been mirrored. Therefore this ancient post of mine still applies: Quick Unique Image Content | Off-White Hat
 
This has been my go to for stock images. When I was younger and broker I would just P-Shop the watermark out of images hah.

I've used it I don't know how many times. I mean you wont find everything but it definitely comes in handy. Also I forgot to mention, you have to click image search in google for it. But most people already knew that.
 
When it concerns fonts, use dafont.com and set the search option to FREE. When it concerns vectors/icons: Icon Search Engine | Iconfinder and set it to FREE only. When it concerns free stock photography, check out: stock.xchng - the leading free stock photography site

And when all else fails for stock photography, just do a quick search at iStock Photo: Royalty Free Stock Photography, Vector Art Images, Music & Video Stock Footage | iStock and buy from there.. If what you need is only for the web, you can use a low dimension option for the image and they're almost always dirt cheap.

FREE is not enough, you should look for Public domain / GNU GPL. If you use a "free for personal use" item on a money site your ass isn't safe.
 
It's pretty sophisticated. I actually think Google's "search by image" is more advanced.

However, neither of them can detect copies once they've been mirrored. Therefore this ancient post of mine still applies: Quick Unique Image Content | Off-White Hat

Hmmmm I was sure I tried mirroring in testing a few months back but I must not of, tried this and it works... 0 results.

I'm sure it'll be easy for them down the line to detect flipped images though, so probably not a long term solution.