After the post I wrote for Outright on Copycatters was published, I started receiving several emails from entrepreneurs who wanted advice about similar situations they had encountered. One of them from Stephanie at Cre8tive Designs, shared proof that someone on Facebook had stolen photos from her blog and claimed them as their own.
It was disheartening to say the least and I felt there must be a solution online that could help people crack down on others lifting original photos and text. I’m happy to say, I found a site that cam help solve at least one of those problems.
Tin Eye is a reverse image search engine that allows you to upload an image and quickly find out if this same image is anywhere else on the web. While it’s still not as big as Google in terms of the number of images it’s crawled online, it’s still a valuable resource to check if you want to ensure your creative work isn’t being used elsewhere.
{Featured Image via Tin Eye}
I’d like to share with you a site that could at least hinder people from copying other people’s photos, etc. The site is called myfreecopyright.com
It doesn’t actually copyright your works but it puts a date/time stamp on each of your works so if anyone tries to copy your works you will have proof that you owned it before they ‘claim’ to own it. It may not stop it altogether but it’s a help in fighting back to keep our hard earned works.
Ooh, thank you so much! I haven’t heard of that one yet. I’ll have to check it out.
Thanks for the advice. Will definitely checkout the TinEye.
TinEye is only good AFTER the event, and as you point out, it’s not perfect.
Really, the only way to prevent online theft of your images is to NOT PUT THEM OUT THERE. Seriously, it’s doesn’t matter what fancy techy copy protection you put on anything, it’s as simple as a screen shot to grab.
If you still want to get your work out there, put a watermark on your image. It might stop a few folk from sharing it around willy nilly. I have written more about the issue here – http://tractorgirl.com.au/opinion-sharing-images-on-the-internet-its-easy-but-is-it-good
Cheers, Julie
aka tractogirl