Protection & copyright

[Janne]

Hi all!

I've not been very active here on TrekEarth, even though I must say I enjoy the site very much. The combination of photography and geography make this a very interesting and educational site.

However, a couple of days ago, I tried to turn a friend on to TrekEarth. But he declined, raising the issue of copyright protection. He pointed out that there are photography sites out there, that unlike TrekEarth don't allow people saving the pictures to disk, i.e. you can only watch them. When you right-click a picture, a pop-up simply recommends you to contact the photographer if you're interested in the picture... But hey! You probably already know what I'm talking about, don't you? I don't need to explain further.

Now, I'm not sure if this would fit with the TrekEarth concept, or if it's at all needed (seeing that the pictures on display are pretty small). But it might be a point in discussing it, right?

[adam]

"there are photography sites out there, that unlike TrekEarth don't allow people saving the pictures to disk"

If they're viewing it on their browser, it's on their hard disk.

"When you right-click a picture, a pop-up simply recommends you to contact the photographer if you're interested in the picture."

This provides no protection at all. One can disable javascript and download it easily. There are other ways to download images as well.

[Janne]

Ah, ok. That kind of settles it, then... ;)

[nst]

Or they can simply save the whole page including pictures. All common browsers include this option.
And if someone is skilled, can take the pic from the browser's cache.

If you get it viewed on your screen, you have it already.

[joseelias]

There are three very easy ways to bypass those "protections".

1 - Save the page in the hard disk and get the images in the folder created by the saving.

2 - go to the temporary internet folders and search the image (if someone knows the name of the file just use the search option)

3 - Simply use the "Print Screen" option in the keyboard and past into a graphical program to crop the image...

As you see this offers no protection at all for anyone with few knowledges of computers. It does work as a reminder or alert but not more.

[philip_coggan]

Unless your friend makes his living as a photographer, I don't see much need to worry about the possibility of your photos being taken off the screen. They can't be printed in magazines/books etc because the resolution is too low (you need a resolution of 300 dots per inch for books/magazines/newspapers, but screen resolution is only 72 dpi). They can be used for other people's websites, but those people could equally scan a photo from a book or magazine and get access thaat way. (They do, to - I have a friend who runs a small web company, and guess where he gets his pictures...). So, post your pics, enjoy, be happy :).