Archive notice: This article was originally published on May 20, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Image rights are difficult to monitor on the Internet. The web is too large and theft too easy to take effective action against image thieves. That is now set to change. The Hamburg online service launches on May 19, 2008 at http://www.photopatrol.eu. It allows photographers, graphic designers, agencies, website operators and brand owners to defend themselves against the unauthorised use of their images on the Internet. An invisible signature that cannot be removed without significant loss of quality is embedded repeatedly across the image as a watermark in any graphic files in JPEG, Tiff or Bitmap format. This
signature leads, through a database maintained by Photopatrol, to the data
of the copyright holder, who has registered there and has their
images signed online. The watermarking technology was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute SIT in Darmstadt.
“In a second step, Photopatrol also allows anyone to identify image rights holders quickly, easily and free of charge”, explains Sven Friedrichs, managing director of the operator, Hamburg-based CSG Copyright Services. “This happens on the web portal http://www.copyrightinfo.eu. Here, the watermarks are used to associate the rights holders’ data with the images again, allowing well-intentioned interested parties to contact the rights holder directly to acquire image rights legally.” This service is unique worldwide, Friedrichs stresses. “We know that there are far more people interested in images
who fail in their search for copyright information on the web than there are unlawful
users.”
$$$$
Web Crawler Reports Locations of Copies
Friedrichs suspects that another important practical feature will be the ability to have Photopatrol automatically search the Internet for unauthorised copies. His company operates its own web crawler for this purpose, a search engine that regularly combs the Internet on behalf of rights holders and reports where their image files are found.
Dr. Martin Steinebach, head of the watermarking group at Fraunhofer SIT, explains the technology in detail: “Our method is particularly fast, and for Photopatrol we have adapted it so that three different pieces of information can be embedded in each image. Alongside information about an image’s creator, the image agency and a unique image identifier can also be embedded.” The watermarks cannot be seen, but are so robust that they are difficult to remove from the image. The watermark marking remains intact even after resizing, recompressing the images or other image editing.
The watermarks can even survive repeated printing and scanning
of images.
Further Links:
- Photopatrol
Copyright Services
