On the prowl

[pecunium]

People steal things.

Some people steal photos. I know it. I could get all upset about it. I could make it harder for people to make copies of things I post on the web. What I do, instead, is post them at a low resolution (rarely more than 125 dpi, which is usually enough to get me to a screen size of 800 pixels in the long axis).

If someone wants to take a photo, and make a print... so what. It won't be as good as I can do it. If they aren't going to buy a print, then they aren't going to buy a print. It might work to convince them to buy one later (sharing is good for you). I don't really think of that as stealing. If they hang it on the wall, and someone asks them where they got it, I might get a word of mouth sale from it. It's small potatoes.

But there are different sorts of thieves. There are thieves who will take your work and pass it off as their own.

Now that, I care about.

So, travelling to and fro on the web (as ya' do), I saw a piece about a search engine: Tiny Eye.

It's in beta right now, and invite/request only. It's a really interesting piece of stuff. One doesn't enter a search string, one enters an image; and they crawl the web looking for that image elsewhere. They can find crops, collages, and I don't know what all.

You enter the url for the imag, and it searches, or you can upload it.

If you are using Firefox, you can get an extension which allows a context menu item when you right click.

Right now I have three invitations, so if some of you are interested, drop me a line.

Comments

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

This could also be useful perhaps, if one finds an image of dubious or unknown origin, for tracking it down to properly attribute / ask permission / etc.