Consider Securing Your Images

Worried someone is swiping your images from your website? Well, logic dictates that if your images are online and someone wants to "borrow" them, they can and probably will.

To an extent I don't have a problem with that. What? Stop the insanity, you say. I did say "to an extent" didn't I?

So here is the caveat: you can borrow my images and even use them on your site as long as my name or brand is prominently displayed on the image and never cropped or erased. If you want to spread some Seshu Spice, I am all for it.

The flip side of this is of course taking it off my site and calling them your own, promoting any product or defaming or libeling anyone present in the image. Tsk, tsk ... as I read in one other visual artist's site, "It's tacky and illegal." And, yeah, I will come after you like a ruffled bull elephant.

So, if you don't see a credit on the image, please don't take, swipe, steal, use, hijack, usurp any of my or anyone else's images. Just because it is available doesn't make it ethical for you to download them. Ask, if you are interested in the images. A short note to the artist will open doors faster than pissing her or him off.

Photographer David Riecks has this page showing a slew of image security options for people like you and me. Some can be easily implemented and some others require a monthly cash outflow. In the end, you have to decide whether to risk it or protect your investment, or in my case make it a win-win situation as long as the guidelines are adhered to by the user/borrower.

So, what do you do with your images? Do you register them with the copyright office? Or do you just don't care? Comment.

Comments

[Melissa]

Greetings, I'm an assistant in Houston, Tx. and I don't really know how I stumbled onto your site, but I've been a subscriber for over a year or maybe it's been longer and I have really enjoyed your site/blog.