If someone has ever taken your work and claimed it as their own, you’ve likely felt annoyed and incensed that someone else is making money from your labor of love. Content and image theft are such instances of disregard for creative effort and intellectual property.
There are actions you can take to reclaim your content, even though you might have felt helpless to stop it (more on this in a moment).
Regretfully, many other people experience content theft daily. However, how can you tell what constitutes and does not constitute content theft?
What is content and image theft?
Content theft occurs when someone utilizes any of your work, including written or image content, without providing a link back to your website.
Image theft, also known as copyright infringement or image piracy, occurs when someone uses, reproduces, or distributes an image without the copyright owner’s permission.
This unauthorized use could involve copying, downloading, or sharing images without proper attribution or a valid license.
Depending on whether you have declared it Creative Commons or not, giving credit for using one of your photos can be interpreted as copyright infringement.
Here are some scenarios that could be deemed to violate someone’s copyright:
- If someone alters and uses your photos, and you haven’t declared them Creative Commons, there’s a concern.
- Your photos may be used with or without credit, especially if not under a Creative Commons license. If it’s not licensed, only you can use it, even with a backlink to your website.
- Content scraping involves copying entire pages of your writing and reposting them verbatim on another website.
- Without your permission, some of your content may be quoted or reposted.
But now the question arises: Are your images stolen? How do you check whether your picture is stolen?
How do you know if your photo/image/video/blog is stolen?
Perform a reverse image search
To check for image theft, you can use a reverse image search to find any hidden illegal copies of your images if you think someone else is stealing them. This may be a regular task if you have many photos online.
You can make use of a variety of services.
Among them, Google Images is most likely the most well-known. TinEye is an additional reverse image search engine that is well worth exploring.
You can perform reverse image searches for image protection on mobile devices in a few different ways.
You have two options: Copy and paste the link to the online copy you shared or upload your photo to the Google Image search engine.
Just make sure you use the image URL—which mainly ends in JPG or PNG—rather than the page URL.
Example of a reverse image search
You can use Google Lens to quickly do a reverse image search for any image you see online.
This works on the Chrome browser on a desktop computer or laptop.
- To search for an image, find it and give it a right-click.
- Click on “Search image with Google”.
- Select the top-level link labeled “Find image source”.
Then, Google will show the image’s search results page.
You can use Google’s reverse image search function to find online photo examples. Other programs carry out the same task. Numerous tools are available for identifying copyright infringement in text and images.
Photographers who granted Getty Images a license for their work might also be informing Getty of any infractions.
They’re called the Getty police because they constantly scour the internet for your pictures. Searching for those images brings them a lot of money. Make sure you are not downloading straight from Google and that you are checking the sources.
Use an online monitoring service
To keep image theft in check, consider using a service that tracks how your photos are used online, especially if you’ve uploaded many of them. One of the few services in this category that provides image protection for up to 500 photos is Pixsy.
The business can help you recover any lost revenue from your pilfered images in addition to monitoring your images. Yet, they will charge a service fee of up to 50% of the secured amount.
How to prevent your images from being stolen?
You can take some precautions to make it more difficult for someone to steal your photos before searching for stolen copies. If you don’t take action before the theft, it can be difficult to prove ownership.
Register your images
You can register your photos in many ways to establish ownership and stop image theft. The Copyright Office is the best ally in your corner if you’re prepared to square off against an image thief.
Give your photos a watermark
Although they are unsightly, watermarks may be able to stop would-be image thieves before they take any. It is simple to crop out a small, inconspicuous watermark, so consider where to put it and how best to conceal yourself. You can add watermarks using Photoshop or any other image-editing program.
Prevent hotlinking
Anti-hotlinking protocols shield images from being shown on other websites. But they don’t stop a thief from just copying and resharing your photos. Consider employing the HTACCESS technique to prevent photo downloads.
Turn off right-clicking
Is it possible for someone to take a screenshot of what they want if they disable right-clicking? Nope. However, it does put additional obstacles in their way if they want to steal pictures in the first place. This is a great was to curb image theft.
Add your information to the metadata
You can also add information to your photos’ metadata to demonstrate that you own them. It’s simple to add a layer of security, even though it can eventually be removed.
Lightroom is the most practical option for adding metadata to photos, but you can add your copyright information using several other Adobe products.
What to do when people are stealing images from you?
File a DMCA notice
If you find that your image is being used without your consent, you can send a DMCA notice to social networking, photo sharing, and e-commerce websites, even if you choose not to use an image registration service. Every website has unique procedures and DMCA guidelines.
Write a letter of cease
Either you or a lawyer can send the letter on your behalf. The latter will be very expensive; at that point, you might just decide to give up and pay to have your content entered into an online monitoring system.
File a copyright infringement lawsuit
Photographers have one very expensive and extreme option here, which can be quite painful and drawn out. To stop someone from stealing your photos, you must sue them in federal court for copyright infringement.
How to prevent copyright infringement, recover stolen content, and safeguard intellectual property?
Popular websites that are being verbatim copied and re-hosted elsewhere in an attempt to profit from Google search engine traffic are becoming more prevalent. Where this has occurred, DMCA.com has assisted numerous clients; sign up now, and DMCA.com will assist.
Wrong URL
Where is the content you stole on the internet? Which link do you want the content to be taken down from? Make sure to include the website or webpage link (URL) of the content that needs to be deleted. Provide the direct link to the content on the website if the stolen material is an image or video that can be found there. Copy and paste the illegal text, or if necessary, include the image’s URL.
Source URL
When someone stole your content, where was it stored? Did it appear on your social media page? Did you find it on your website? Even if the content has already been taken down from its original location, provide the precise URL from which it was stolen. The notice still benefits from the original URL. You can use a computer, camera, or phone if it isn’t available online. Provide the link to the exact page from where it was stolen if you found it online, on a website, or in cloud storage.
You can give that URL along with a description of the source of the content’s theft and upload the original work to a cloud storage service.
Description of ownership
Who owns the content, and how was it stolen? Is it your content? How is it yours? Did you make it, purchase it, and secure a copyright? Who is claiming to be the content’s owner? Who can submit a DMCA Takedown request? Did someone steal the content, and when did you create it?
Why use DMCA.com takedown services?
Industry best-in-class
DMCA.com pioneered the first takedown requests made online with its groundbreaking takedown services. The most expertise and longest history of successful takedowns belongs to DMCA.com.
Experienced
DMCA.com is the takedown expert with the most experience in the industry, having worked with lawyers and legal firms all over the world for many years.
Professional
Professionalism is always the priority. The takedown crew at DMCA.com maintains a high standard for quality work and stops at nothing to achieve the fastest possible removal.
Qualified & Certified
Every member of the takedown team contributes significantly to every takedown request. The highly qualified staff at DMCA.com, proficient in both administrative and technical research processes, handle each takedown request.
Cheaper
An attorney’s fees for conducting research, gathering evidence, creating notices, finding contacts, filing notices, and following up can be extremely high. Most of this data is already available on DMCA.com because the takedown team has experience working with thousands of hosts and websites worldwide.
Faster
The takedown team is knowledgeable about each notice’s requirements and takedown policies. This implies that the time it takes to file a takedown request is significantly shorter than when received compared to a lawyer or legal firm. Most of the time, content removal requests fulfilled within the first 24 to 48 hours of submission.
DMCA pricing structure: Know the complete plan for each budget
| Parameters | Details |
| Protection from $10/month | Online content protection is used on over 1.3 million websites. |
| Takedowns from $199 | Get your stolen content removed from the internet. |
| Compliance from $10/month | Handle takedown notices fast, easy and low cost |
What license do I need to get images?
You may download any file from the website using the Standard or Extended License.
You can use a downloaded file for personal or business purposes as long as you comply with the terms of the Standard License, which is the default license type.
It includes various usage scenarios, including digital use, books and e-books, newspapers, magazines, product packaging, advertising, marketing, and UI designs for websites and apps.
A Standard License restricts the print run to 500,000 copies.
The On-Demand Downloads are the only way to obtain the Extended License.
With the Extended License, you can use the downloaded file in products meant for free distribution or resale, such as coloring books, T-shirts, postcards, posters, and cups. It also covers all uses allowed under the Standard License and has no print restrictions.
Best places for free images
Since the human brain processes visual information 60,000 times quicker than text, attention-grabbing photos are essential for communicating your message. What happens, though, if you don’t have enough visual content? Visit one of these websites to obtain it for free!
Freepik
Freepik is a robust search engine that assists users in locating free, high-quality stock photos and other graphic resources like PSD files, vector graphics, and illustrations. You can download millions of graphic resources for use in any design project, whether personal or professional. Furthermore, the search engine on Freepik boasts robust filters that make it easy to locate any resource, orientation, color, style, etc.
Pixabay
This website contains a huge collection of excellent photos.
Although Unsplash is often beneficial for bloggers and content marketers, its orientation is more focused on business and marketing. The fact that Pixabay also provides free vectors and illustrations is another significant benefit.
Pexels
If you intend to use stock photos in social media graphics or other visual projects, it can be beneficial to use a source that works well with simple graphic design software. The user-friendly and speedy Pexels website provides an extensive selection of free images and videos for your upcoming project.
Moreover, thanks to the tool’s extra plugins, you can access and modify stock photos straight from Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Figma, or Sketch.
Flickr
Flickr is a social network that allows users to share photos. With over ten billion photos, the website connects both amateur and professional photographers from across the globe.
Flickr images are known for featuring rich metadata, including tags, EXIF data, geolocation information, and more. Thus, to locate images captured in France, choose the World Map option from the Explore dropdown menu and click on any of the pink dots that appear within that nation. Alternatively, you can enter the term into the search bar located in the top-right corner of the Flickr homepage to find images of golden retrievers. Thousands of results will appear.
Rawpixel
Although there is a large selection of free stock photos available, Rawpixel is more than just a stock photo website. It describes itself as a “creative home” that offers a variety of visual resources, including illustrations, public domain art, fonts, stickers, and images. Rawpixel likely has what you need if you’re searching for a one-stop shop for your upcoming artistic project.
Conclusion
Choosing never even to upload your photos in the first place is the only way to eliminate the chance of them being stolen.
However, it will be much more difficult for someone to engage in image theft online if you take a few preventative measures before you publish. Feel free to share your work with the world, safeguarded against unauthorized use.
Meet Priyanka Joshi, an accomplished SEO and content marketing expert. With a deep understanding of search engine algorithms, she excels at optimizing online content. Priyanka's unique blend of SEO strategies and storytelling ensures high search engine rankings and audience engagement. Her passion for staying updated on SEO trends sets her apart in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
With over a decade of industry expertise, Advanced Ads is your surefooted ally in the ad tech realm. Their array of WordPress ad manager plugins enhances your advertising strategy, ensuring effective ad placements. Rely on their ad tech proficiency to stay ahead in the dynamic world of digital advertising. Contact info
