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Protect Internet Copyrights for Images
Internet copyrights are not only relevant to articles on the web, but also images. Unfortunately not everyone respects Internet copyrights and it is thus up to you to prevent people from stealing your images on the web as far as possible.
A few tips regarding the protection of your Internet copyrights when it comes to images are briefly shared below. For in-depth information and legal assistance you can contact our team of intellectual property lawyers at Smit & Van Wyk.
Watermark Stamp
Watermarking your images is one way of deterring others from using the images without authorisation and where relevant acknowledgement and royalty payments. You can use a combination of two or more methods to ensure that everyone seeing your images becomes aware of the copyrights involved.
Apart from clearly stating copyright or all rights reserved as part of the visible watermark, your name should also be added in addition to the copyright symbol. Not only a visible watermark, but also an invisible watermark can be used. In this way you can also quickly identify and proof that an image belongs to you when visiting someone’s website. They may have ignored the visible watermark, but not realising that there is an invisible part to the image, they may still have used it at their website. You can use a special package for this such as Digimarc that can be plugged into your existing photo editing package.
Right Click Disabling
Although not a full proof method, you can add a right click script that brings up a message that the image is copyright protected and may not be copied. You can also disable right click and copying of an image. If you add the invisible watermark as well as right-click disabling, and the visible messages, it will help to reduce the risk of people ignoring your Internet copyrights. If someone has stolen and used your images on the Internet or in an offline medium, contact us at Smit & Van Wyk for immediate assistance.
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