A combination of copyright infringement, increased competition and the large amount of free images available on the Web legally have combined to make things very difficult for photographers who want to earn a living from their work.

To respond to these challenges, photographers and companies that support them are seeking out new approaches to doing business and Scoopshot is one such company. This Helsinki-based company thinks it may have an approach that photographers can use to earn money from their work and it starts with a free iPhone app and a global workforce of photographers.

How Scoopshot Works

There are two major ways a photographer can use Scoopshot.

First, amateur photographers can download the Scoopshot app for either their iOS or Android device and then take pictures of newsworthy events or other things publications might be interested in. You can then set a price for the photo and upload it to the site. The photo will be available for sale for 48 hours before it will rotate off.

Second, more professional freelance photographers can upload a portfolio to the site and get themselves hired by publications seeking photos. For example, a newspaper in one country could hire a photographer in another rather than either using wire photos or other stock images.

Both professional and mobile users can respond to various tasks posted by publications seeking specific images.

For journalists, the service works one of three ways:

1. Sifting through the collection of uploaded works for sale.
2. Posting an assignment for the community and crowdsourcing the needed images.
3. Hiring a freelancer directly.

In the end, the main goal of this system is simple: Bring together people with cameras who are in a position to take photos of interesting things and the people who might want to buy those photos. This is done in an enclosed ecosystem that both minimizes copyright infringement and ensures a (relatively) unique product.

Benefits of Scoopshot

Since the ecosystem of Scoopshot is enclosed, meaning that only sellers and confirmed buyers can look at the images, photographers are reassured that the risk of copyright infringement is much less and journalists are reassured that the images are unique and that they are getting clear rights to use them.

This is in stark contrast to the more open ecosystem most stock photo sites offer, where anyone can view and browse images, including those who might be looking for free images to just take.

In short, Scoopshot offers a private, simple and streamlined way for photographers and buyers to interact and trade early publication rights before the larger Web sees the image and begins to spread it far and wide.

However, it doesn’t solve a lot of the critical problems that come with being a photographer and it isn’t a perfect solution, leaving a few critical gaps in the protection it gives photographers.

Limitations of Scoopshot

Scoopshot has two fairly sizable limitations that photographers need to be aware of if they choose to consider it.

1. For Photojournalists Only: The 48-hour timeframe for new photos limits the service’s functionality to those who want to do less time sensitive work.
2. Can’t Help Once Photos Are Licensed: Once a photo is licensed and placed in a publication and, most likely, its site, there’s not much that Scoopshot can do to prevent infringement of it. In short, Scoopshot gives you that first sale but can’t help much after that.

These limitations are, most likely, acceptable to photographers who mostly do photojournalism. In many of these cases, there’s no market for an image after 48 hours so the infringements of it past that point don’t matter. But those who have work that has value long after that window has closed will continue to face great challenges.

In short, this is meant for photographers such as Matti Matikainen, who found a photo he took of Teija Vesterbacka, the wife of Rovio founder Peter Vesterbaka, who was wearing an Angry Birds-themed dress. The photo spread like wildfire, even appearing on several major news outlets, but only handful sought permission and only one paid a licensing fee.

Photographers focusing on more artistic work or that are creating content more in line with traditional stock photography, photos that have a longer shelf life, likely won’t see much benefit from Scoopshot.

That being said, it is easily imagined an invite-only stock photography platform that would work much the same way but without the 48-hour limitation and targeted at larger media buyers rather than just journalists.

However, that system would also not be able to deal with the images after they were legally purchased and it is difficult to say if such a system could be viable as it would require a large number of purchasers. That being said, some services do provide something like this, but usually by acquiring all rights to the images involved and selling them to clients as a complete library, rather than piecemeal as with Scoopshot.

Bottom Line

All in all, Scoopshot is an interesting idea but it’s by no means a silver bullet. Though the company has done some €112,335.94 ($148,000) in business with 33 publications, it’s not yet a large enough player to make a major dent in the photo market. Also, with most of its clients situated in the EU, specifically Finland, Sweden and neighboring countries, there likely won’t be much those outside of the region can do with it (though they can participate).

In the end, the idea is fairly promising and the model that Scoopshot follows, the one of an enclosed marketplace, may be of greater importance to photographers in the years ahead, but it won’t solve anything by itself.

As with most great ideas, it’s just a piece of a larger puzzle, but it is a piece that many photographers should be interested in.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Dylan Paintings Draw Scrutiny

First off today, musician Bob Dylan is drawing controversy over his recent series of paintings, “The Asia Series”, as it appears at least some of them may not have been painted from his experiences in Asia, as the gallery promised, but from well-known photographs. Two of the paintings in particular “Trade” and “Opium” appear to copy the composition of earlier photographs almost exactly. The Gagosian Gallery, where the paintings are on display, released a statement saying that: “While the composition of some of Bob Dylan’s paintings is based on a variety of sources, including archival, historic images, the paintings’ vibrancy and freshness come from the colors and textures found in everyday scenes he observed during his travels.”

2: Spotify Is Killing Piracy (in Sweden, at Least)

Next up today, music streaming service Spotify appears to be having a profound impact on piracy, at least in Sweden. The country is reporting a 25% drop in illegal music downloads following the launch of Spotify. Music streaming has also become the most popular way for obtaining music in the country, with 40% of users engaging in it, which is 4x the 10% who admitted to pirating content.

3: NinjaVideo Founders Plead Guilty to Copyright Infringement

Finally today, another former administrator at NinjaVideo has plead guilty to criminal copyright infringement. Hana Beshara plead guilty yesterday for her involvement in the site, which was shuttered in June 2010 by having its domain seized. Criminal charges were filed agianst 5 administrators earlier this month. Beshara, according to the criminal complaint, was the day-to-day administrator of the site. She joins David Howard Smith, who plead guilty last week, in signing plea deals over their involvement with the site.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

In November 2008 I wrote an article that highlighted how Flickr and Facebook both strip out EXIF data in images that are uploaded. A comment to that post recently got me excited about the possibility Flickr had changed its ways and initial testing indicated it might have.

However, sadly, a year and a half later, nothing has changed. I’ve redone the tests with no luck. Flickr and Facebook are both stripping out EXIF data to uploaded images. The only exception is that I can now confirm Flickr is preserving the data on original images, just not on the automatically generated resized versions.

Below is a quick analysis of the problem and why it is a serious issue that every photographer should be worried about.

How Flickr Does It

If you upload images to Flickr, the site automatically generates up to five different versions including square, thumbnail, small, medium and large. If you are a non-pro account user, these are the only images sizes available as they can not download originals.

The original files preserve the EXIF data but the other sizes, the ones generated by Flickr. Do not. For example, compare the EXIF data stored in the two sizes of this image, the original being on the left. (Note: Original image by mikebaird and licensed under a Creative Commons License)

Since that image was from 2008, I redid the test using this image, which was uploaded this month and found the same results. (Note: Original image by dicktay2000 and licensed under a Creative Commons License)

In short, Flickr still has the same problem it did two years ago and is stripping out the metadata on images when it resizes them. Unfortunately, it resizes all images uploaded and, in the case of unpaid users, there is no way to access the originals. Furthermore, since the original images are usually too large for Web use, it is the smaller ones that get passed around the most.

Facebook Too

I also repeated the test with Facebook, using an image I took during a recent geocaching run, and compared an original from my phone to the version I downloaded from Facebook. The original is on the left.

Unfortunately, with Facebook, there is no way to download the original photo and, as such, the EXIF data is never seen publicly. All you can do is either add a visual watermark or hope that, if the image is passed around on the Web, that attribution remains intact.

Why This is Bad

With the recent near-miss in the Digital Economy Bill in Britain over orphan works, it is clear that orphan works legislation will be a part of the future of copyright.

Though there were differences between the UK bill and the two that were tried in the U.S. without success, the crux is the same. If the owner or the rightsholder of a copyrighted work can not be found or identified, the work can be used so long as the person using it performed a reasonable search.

This issue most directly impacts photographers and visual artists as their work is more difficult to search for and often has no attribution affixed to it. As such, image sharing sites, such as Flickr, should be doing everything they can to help identify the authors of the works they host, including preserving the EXIF data.

The failure to do so, especially for Flickr, which caters so strongly to professional photographers, is very dangerous and may create serious problems down the road for the users who trusted the service.

Bottom Line

While I grant that this is an invisible problem in that EXIF data is not immediately seen by those who view or use the site, it is an important one to fix. Hopefully both of these sites will work on a fix to preserve the metadata of images uploaded to them to prevent creating orphan works.

After all, the problem of orphaned works is not one that’s going to go away and the only way it can be resolved with current works is through cooperation of all involved and that includes photo sharing sites.

In the meantime though, just be aware that, when you upload your images to Flickr or Facebook, your metadata may not travel with them.

During my talk at WordCamp Dallas, which should be up on this site later this week, I discussed ways to locate free and legal content for your site. During this talk, I highlighted some of the better ways to get images for your blog posts, including Photo Dropper and Zemanta (though the latter doesn’t fully complete the CC license).

However, for those who either don’t have WordPress or just want an easy way to copy and paste HTML code for an image, JazzBiscuit’s Creative Commons Image Search may be just the tool you’re looking for. Though it is an older tool, having been around well over a year, it makes it amazingly easy to find images on Flickr and embed them into your site, complete with all of citation needed to fulfill the CC license.

This can be especially useful if you have a Dynamic site, are looking for images to go along with an article submitted elsewhere or just want to do a quick search to see what is available, without installing a plugin.

However, it isn’t a perfect system and users should be wary before relying upon it too heavily.

How it Works

Photo owned by modomatic (cc)

The way the system works is pretty basic overall. When you visit the site, you are prompted to select an image size, either small, medium or large, and then enter the term you’re looking for. After a few seconds you’ll see a series of thumbnails of relevant images on Flickr, clicking one of them pulls the image up in full size, meaning the size you chose, and provides the source code you need to put the image on your site.

You can see a sample of a small image to the right.

It is important to choose the size of the image you want before performing your search. Also, bear in mind that medium and large images are probably too big for a blog post, making small the only practical size for most sites.

All in all, the system does its job fairly well, though there are a few limitations to bear in mind.

Limitations and Concerns

The astute will have already noticed that the application does not ask you if you are using the image for a commercial or non-commercial use. Though this might seem to be a legal issue, the site only produces images that are under the CC-BY license. This means that the images can be used for any purpose (provided attribution and other terms are met) but it also means the service misses images under other CC licenses.

For example, if you run a non-commercial site, you can use any of the CC licenses for this purpose. However, this application will only find images licensed under the least restrictive, and least common, terms.

Also, though the page says it was updated in March allow users to flush images left or right, no such command seems to exist on the site. As such, you’ll likely have to wrap the image in a table or div to ensure that it is positioned correctly, meaning that there is still some coding left to do. Though Photo Dropper has this issue as well, it allows you to set it up only once and have it be consistent in the future.

The biggest problem, however, is that I am late to this party. The site that this is an offshoot of has been inactive since August, 2008 and the page is being kept alive solely for the benefit of those who use it. Outside of the reported March update, which doesn’t seem to be working, not much has been done with it. Though it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the tool, it makes me less than certain about its future.

Bottom Line

Personally, I prefer Photo Dropper strongly to this image search tool. Photo Dropper is easier to use, finds more images and is better integrated with WordPress, my blogging platform of choice. However, I can see a lot of potential in a Web-based tool like this one and, with a few simple improvements, it really could be a viable tool for those who either want a non-plugin solution or don’t use WordPress.

As it is now, it is simply too limited and its future is too uncertain for me to highly recommend it. If you need it and it can provide you the images you want, by all means use it. But as it sits right now, as far as I can see, it is about 80% of a really great project.

Unfortunately though, if the author’s abandonment of the main site it seems like that may not happen.

Still, it would be an interesting project for someone who were interested in this issue to take up.

With the likelihood of some form of an orphan works bill being passed sometime within the next few years, visual artists, whose works are not easily searched for, have been worried that it could lead to them losing some of their rights to their works.

However, several companies have been working on technology solutions to the orphan works problem, both to reduce the need for an orphan works bill and to prevent works from becoming orphans needlessly. The hope is that by creating search tools and indexes to locate copyright holders of images, artists that take adequate steps will have little to no reason to worry about their work becoming an orphan.

One such company is StockPhotoFinder.com, which has launched a new beta service The Copyright Registry. Though The Copyright Registry’s site may not look like much, it actually belies a powerful set of tools that could help artists and publishers, especially stock artists, keep their works from being mistaken as an orphan.

The question is whether this service will gain traction, if so, will it be useful enough to entice artists and searchers alike to use it.

How it Works

The Copyright Registry, which is not affiliated in any way with the Copyright Office nor is it a substitute for a copyright registration, actually has several different components.

However, the main functionality of the site requires you to either install a bookmarklet in your browser or paste a URL into a form on their home page. The site will then go through the page and extract all of the image, letting you select which works you wish to mark.

If you do not have an upgraded account, you’ll be able to view who has been tagged as the copyright holder/aritst of various images. You’ll also be able to edit or add such tags to work, provided a formal claim has not been made. Should anyone else run another copy of that image through the service, even if it is from another site, they will see the information that you added identifying the owner.

The idea is that, should anyone be interested in using that image but be uncertain of who the copyright holder, they can run the image through the service and get the needed information. For the most part, the service works in a wiki-like format where anyone can add or alter information. Copyright disputes, should they arise, will be handled with a dispute resolution policy similar to ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.

The exception to the wiki format is with authenticated accounts. Those who pay $25 per year and provide additional personal information can put a formal claim on a work and “lock out” others from altering that information. Though a system such as this could easily be abused, especially since $25 would not discourage a person with bad intentions from claiming multiple works as their own and locking out non-member copyright holders, it also guards against abuse by anonymous users.

The service also keeps track of where the images it finds are used on the Web. It only looks for exact copies of the images, meaning even slight modifications of the image could throw off the detection system. The system, right now. focuses mostly on finding matches that have been processed via the bookmarklet and/or form, but there are plans to begin spidering the Web at large to look for additional matches.

The entire system works without uploading any images to the service, only fingerprints are stored, and that should help the site scale neatly even as more and more images are added to the site.

The system also has support for PLUS metadata embedded within images, though not EXiF or any other metadata at this time.

Veripixel

Another interesting element of the service is its new copyright management information tool, Veripixel. Veripixel adds a barely visible barcode to an image in the upper-left hand corner. However, since it is a full-color barcorde it is able to use only nine pixels, all in one row, to dispaly and read the data.

Here is a sample of Veripixel using the top of a large picture of Marilyn Monroe. Notice the highlighted part in the upper left hand corner (You may wish to click the link and open up the full image).

Now here are the pixels zoomed in very tight.

The pixels are a code that instantly tell The Copyright Registry which image it is and who the copyright owner is as the script looks for those pixels before matching against the fingerprint. With those nine pixels, if left intact, the registry has all it needs to determine the owner of a photograph or image. Though they can be easily removed, knowingly doing so for malicious purposes is a violation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and can be sued for.

However, Veripixels is a side project for The Copyright Registry and is not needed in order for the system to function. Still, it is an interesting idea and a free service for all to use.

Drawbacks and Limitations

Though there are a lot of reasons to get excited about The Copyright Registry. There are some kinks that need to be worked out and issues that would be better off resolved. They include the following:

1. Site Apearance: Though it is in beta, the site doesn’t look well put together and the usability is lacking. Though the form to sign in and add a URL are clear, it isn’t easy for a first-time user to understand how to use the site. Even the video, embedded below, only demonstrates the bookmarklet system.
2. Tagging Issues: The process of tagging images is slow. If you add a Flickr URL, for example, it will pull every single image on the page, no matter how small. This includes the logo, the avatar, the thumbnails from the photostream and much more. You may have to wade through four or five pages of small images before finding the one large one that you want. You can overcome this by pasting in only the actual image URL or by using the bulk import tools, which will be available to authenticated members shortly. However, the lack of intelligence on the script’s part in detecting which images are the highest priority can be frustrating.
3. Uncertain Future: The site is going to have something of a chicken and egg problem. For the Registry to be considered part of a “reasonable” search, as was discussed in the last drafts of the orphan works bill, it must be widely used by a lot of artists. However, until it is part of such a search, artists have little motivation to use it. The site hopes to overcome this through partnerships with stock photography agencies and larger artists. That may be enough to “jump start” the cycle of artist use and reasonable search.
4. Exact Matching Only: However, the biggest limitation that I see is that the matching performed by the service is exact only. If an image is modified even slightly, it will register as an entirely knew work. This means that artists could have to lay claim to many dozens of copies of their work floating around the Web just to be sure that none of the individual images become an orphan. This could be very time consuming.

In regards to the final point, it would be nice to see this service paired with a visual search, such as Tineye, to take some of that burden off. The decision to focus on exact matching is understandable, especially when you start looking into fair use issues and that the site was never designed to track or prevent copyright infringement, just to aid those who want to the right thing and license images properly.

But with the way copyrighted works are passed around on the Web, if anyone wishes to do the right thing but has the wrong version of the image (unless the Veripixel is intact), then there is a problem. The sad truth is that every popular image has multiple versions on the Web, if someone doesn’t search for the artist’s original, it may still appear to be an orphan.

I’m hoping that the first two aspects of the site will be fixed as the site moves out of beta, they both should be relatively trivial fixes. The third problem seems to be well-addressed already but the fourth may be a problem that plagues the registry for some time to come. Though a strategic partnership could probably solve it, it is unclear if they will do so.

Bottom Line

Overall, the Copyright Registry is an interesting service. Though it has much of the same functionality and structure as Numly and even MyFreeCopyright, it is well-targeted at artists and photographers, especially large ones with many works (at least once the bulk import tools come online).

Though I worry that the name may cause many to believe it is a formal copyright registration, despite numerous disclosures to the contrary, the idea itself is solid and most of the flaws in execution can be addressed as the site comes out of beta.

I recommend that artists at least be aware of this site and, if they have a few moments, to poke around and try it out. Registry services such as this one will likely play a major role in artists’ lives in the coming years so it is important to be familiar with the anti-orphan tools now.

Furthermore, The Copyright Registry seems to be well-poised to be one of the leaders in this field moving forward. Even if it isn’t a perfect solution, those who register and try it now will have a voice and help determine the direction it grows.

Video

Find The Creator and Copyright Owner of Uncredited Works from Any Website from c-registry on Vimeo.

But what if the image you want is not available under Creative Commons and, instead is something that has to be licensed? How do you use the image without paying high licensing fees or dealing with uncertainty about the license?

GumGum may have the answer.

Its new photo licensing service makes it easy to find images that may be relevant to your content and license them, either for a token rate or free using an advertising model.

This system could be a boon for stock photographers and anyone who wants to use images on their blog as it makes it easy for photographers and licensers to get together and make exchanges, all the while going to great lengths to protect the original work.

For photographers, it may be the most fair system available, even if Webmasters might not like how some elements of the service work.

How it Works

The GumGum process starts with a photographer uploading a group of images to the site and providing information about them, including what the image is and the CPM that they wish to charge for it.

Once the image is processed, the user comes to the site later, performs a related search and gets a collection of potential candidates.

The list is often quite long, even for fairly obscure terms, but seems to focus heavily on celebrity-related images. This is likely due to issues with selling pictures of non-celebrity individuals.

Once you find the image you want, you click the image and then are taken to a page that offers you the chance to license the work. You are given two options, the first is to license it with a CPM method, which means you pay a small amount per 1000 times the image is displayed, or a advertising-based model that lets you use it for free, but with an ad overlay.

Once you have made your selection, you then provide the URL of the site it will be appearing on and select the size that you need, choosing from small, medium, large or a custom size.

Once you click the “Purchase” button, you are given access, not to the image itself, but to HTML code that enables you to embed it into your site. It not only prevents you from being able to put the image on other sites without purchasing, but prevents your visitors from simply right clicking the image and taking it for themselves.

Though this DRM is questionable at best, it undoubtedly will make many photographers very happy.

The end result is that the image will appear on your site exactly as shown at the end of this article. Obviously, I am not profiting from the advertising in this work nor do I have any control over the content, it is for demonstration purposes only.

Why It is Different

GumGum is certainly not the only microstock service on the Web. However, it combines several elements to make it an interesting, and at least somewhat unique, service.

1. CPM Licensing: Though many will protect using CPM versus flat-rate licensing, it is actually more fair to the photographer and to many sites. Smaller sites, those needing only a few thousand impressions, will spend far less money and larger ones, which can usually afford to spend more, will pay the photographer more. It also creates a stream of revenue for the photographer over time rather than just a one-time fee.
2. Advertising Model: Sites that can not afford the CPM fee can select the free advertising model where small ads are run at the bottom of the image. This gives “free” bloggers access to images that previously would have been closed off to them.
3. Flash/JavaScript Embedding: The use of Flash and/or JavaScript to embed the image not only prevents the actual image from changing hands and offers GumGum a means to track the images, but it makes it very easy for novice Webmasters to drop the image in, without worrying about resizing the image or formatting it.

For Photographers, GumGum likely seems like a very appealing option. In addition to the above elements, GumGum also does not take a percentage of the licensing revenues. Rather, it charges a very small “shipping and handling” fee above your CPM rate (Ex: Making a .20 CPM image cost .207846425 to the end user) and earns their money from that. For advertising model licenses, GumGum does not make any revenue promises, but says it pays the full revenue for the advertisement less a flat fee.

GumGum also provides all of the image hosting, something that benefits Webmasters who are looking to offload their images, and handles all of the transactions the same as any other microstock site.

Potential Issues

The GumGum system, however, does raise some concerns and has some limitations that have to be weighed.

1. Unpredictable Pricing: A .20 CPM sounds good when you’re only pulling in 2000 page views per post. However, if the article gets Dugg or otherwise goes viral, it could easily generate hundreds of thousands of pageviews. There is almost no way to predict this and your only defense is to quickly convert your license to Ad-supported in the event of a spike.
2. Limited Selection: Though GumGum has a large number of images, almost all of them are celebrity related. Though this makes sense for legal reasons, there are almost no shots of objects or landscapes, something you would expect in a robust stock photo catalogue.
3. Free Alternatives Exist: As I mentioned in my previous article, there is a wealth of CC-licensed works that are available for use by bloggers for free and without advertising. That collection is both more robust and is expanding rapidly. Though there does not seem to be much overlap between GumGum and the traditional CC fair, many bloggers will find all that they need for free.
4. Awkward Insertion: Though the embedding is far easier than downloading the image, resizing it and reuploading it, it doesn’t allow much flexibility. I struggled to get the word wrap right on the image and that is why I had to paste the sample below under its own heading.
5. Ad Block Vulnerability: I did a quick test and AdBlockPlus is able to block the ads, at least in the JavaScript version. While this is true of most ads, it does mean that the CPM for the photographer will be lower than expected when dealing with those who license the ad-based version.

Beyond those issues, many bloggers will be uncomfortable with either displaying ads on the site, especially those they do not profit from, and it remains to be seen how many will pay to “rent” an image based upon the number of views. Considering that sites such as iStockPhoto offer images for sale at such low rates.

Considering that GumGum does not even transfer the image itself, just access to it, it seems likely that many bloggers will want to stay away.

Conclusions

GumGum is a very interesting idea but the target market, bloggers and Webmasters needing very low-priced images for their site, is already very well served.

Photographers will likely take a great interest in the site as it enables them to reach that market while both protecting their work and obtaining a steady stream of income. Bloggers, however, aren’t likely to find that much interesting.

Though there are obvious exceptions to that rule, such as gossip bloggers and those that deal heavily with celebrity news, most are likely going to be served adequately by the Creative Commons community and can find what they need on sites such as Flickr or by using the PhotoDropper plugin.

In the end, the success of GumGum is going to hinge solely on the quality of the photographs it offers. If it can better serve bloggers than the existing system, it has a bright future ahead of it. However, that is going to be an uphill battle.

Sample Image

The best result when you search for “Pirate”.

Video Introduction to GumGum

Earlier today she, through her attorney Richard Harrison, filed suit today in a Tampa courtroom against TVX Films, its owner, Robert Burge, and two retailers who sold the DVD. The 11 count complaint sites copyright infringement, misappropriation of image, false light and emotional distress among other counts.

The claim does not specify any damages but is seeking both punitive and actual damages. Since the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, they are not seeking statutory damages or attorney fees at this time.

According to the complaint, even after promising to cease use of the image, TVX films continued to use the image on the DVD itself, despite having removed it from the cover, a practice that was ongoing as recently as June.

As of this time, none of the defendants have responded to the suit.

Harrison, in a phone call earlier today, said that he contacted Coton after reading about her plight on a gossip site. After discovering that no other attorney had agreed to help her, he offered to step in and take the case.

This will be a case to follow and one that all rightsholders on the Web will be affected by, I will be bringing you updates as I get them.

Read the Complaint (PDF)

Also, since Lightbox disables or limits access to most of the right click tools, including the “save image” attribute, some Webmasters have come to think of it as a way to prevent or reduce image theft.

However, Lightbox was never designed to stop or slow down image theft. Though it is a very beautiful effect and a very effective way to display images, it is not effective at preventing users from copying images. That was never the goal of it.

In fact, there are several simple and easy means of circumventing the protections Lightbox does provide, none of which require any special knowledge or expertise.

Easily Defeated

Lightbox, as widespread as it is, does nothing to prevent users from downloading the images in a gallery. There are at least three methods that any visitor can use to download the full-sized images to their hard drive.

First, on the gallery page itself, all the user has to do is right click the thumbnail of the image and then select “save target as”. Since Lightbox galleries link directly to the larger image, pulling the javascript on the click itself, this enables the user to download the full-sized image and completely bypass the javascript effects.

Second, after one has opened the image in the Lightbox frame, all one has to do is click the image itself and drag it to their desktop or an open folder. The trick to making this work is to click before the Lightbox frame has fully loaded. After the frame is completely open, this kind of drag and drop is, in most cases, disabled.

Finally, in the same vein as the second attack, it is also possible, while the Lightbox frame is loading, to right click the image and save it that way. In both cases, the best time is after the image has loaded, but before all of the surrounding items have opened up.

In addition to those methods, it is also possible to simply take a screenshot of the image and crop it out or switch off Javascript to completely bypassing the Lightbox effect.

The bottom line is that there are many different ways to copy full images hidden in a Lightbox gallery and any site that relies on Lightbox as part of its content protection strategy needs to realize that Lightbox does not provide any actual protection.

Securing Lightbox

Those who are interested in using and securing Lightbox can take several steps to help reduce the amount of content theft they experience.

1. Eliminate right click on gallery pages: Though very annoying to legitimate users, if you’re certain there is no valid reason to be right clicking on a page, you can disable right click on the gallery page to prevent people from saving the target. Use with great caution.
2. Require Javascript: Since the vast majority of browsers have access to javascript, you can require it to view the gallery page. Anyone who does not have it will not be exposed to the raw images after clicking through.
3. Use Modified Scripts: Using modified versions of Lightbox, you can embed the image in a flash file and let viewers see it that way. The prevents the full image from being exposed.

However, as powerful as those methods are, they can only address some of the ways to circumvent Lightbox. The only real way to secure Lightbox, or any gallery for that matter, is to ensure that the full image is never downloaded to the user’s computer by watermarking them before they are sent out, either on your machine or on your server.

Sadly, Lightbox, nor any other javascript gallery system, will be able to fully protect images, though they may create some frustration and confusion for lazy plagiarists.

Conclusions

None of this is intended to be a criticism of Lightbox. Lightbox never claimed to be nor was it ever designed to protect content. It is an interesting and practical effect, but not much more.

However, when it comes to image protection, Webmasters often times misplace their trust into techniques and methods that were never designed to stop theft. In a desperate attempt to abate very real and very reasonable worries about theft and plagiarism, some will turn to anything that even gives the vague appearance of offering protection.

Sadly, this kind of misguided trust is more dangerous than having no protection at all. If one is vulnerable and they know they are at risk, they can take precautions and seek out real methods to address the problem. If they put their faith in false protection, they do nothing but remain just as vulnerable.

Lightbox is a great script but it is important to note the limitations of it. Anyone who is relying upon it for image protection needs to be aware that it is nothing of the sort. Fortunately, there are real protection methods available and, if you wish, you do not have to remove your Lightbox effect to use them.

It just requires some advance planning and preparation.