Research, evidence or research is needed that shows that copy protection is not worth it.

Question

I am trying to convince someone that copy protection of images such as watermarks, javascript without right-clicking, overlaying on blank images, etc., is not worth the effort, as they are easy to get around even by non-technical users.

I also try to convince them that these measures annoy customers, as this impedes the user's work and does nothing to prevent image theft. At the end of the day, if his on the Internet, his audience and people can accept him if they want.

So, I am looking for good research, proof, research, everything that has numbers to support a drop in sales, user experience, etc. before and after these measures.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can imagine the following:

PrtScrn - even if the right click is locked, the user can still print the print screen and cut the image in Paint

Retouching - even if the watermark was in the picture, it can be easily removed by any user who has read the basic Photoshop tutorial / other photo retouching photo editor.

But in the end, I think that the best protection against theft is to actually have a license for the image, and if you notice or receive a notification that someone used it without your pretext, I think that you have all the arguments against him. You cannot blame if the user saves him in his Documents folder - he is exactly the same as if you were distributing 1000 leaflets and judging people for being in a drawer at home, because he uses your photo.

Answer 2

Perhaps this is not what you want to hear, but a full-sized watermark (and not just overlay graphics) is a reliable protection of images.

The rest can be easily explained:

• User can disable JavaScript
• Overlays of all kinds are useless, the user just needs to look at his cache, use the browser or use the debugging tools in the new browser to get the original image

Answer 3

these measures annoy customers because it complicates the user's work.

No, this is not so - since when did a correctly placed transparent overlay impede the user's work?

At the end of the day, if his on the Internet, his audience and people can accept him if they want.

This is publicly available, but not easy to take. Images are copyrighted and are subject to copyright laws and international treaties.

not worth the effort, as they are easy to get around even by non-technical users.

Yes, this is correct, but these measures will allow the majority of non-specialized users to save images; this will not stop people who really want them.

The problem is not that people save images because you implicitly gave them this permission by showing it on the network (browsers load the image into the cache and then show it). The real problem is that people use images illegally without permission, which is incredibly difficult to stop. There is every reason to take reasonable measures to protect your images, if you can stop the not very smart users who do this, then you have recovered a little from the headache. For people who insist on reusing your images, only direct legal actions will work with any guarantor, since threats and complaints for Internet providers can be very successful and missed. Therefore, if you can ruin everything using discrete but effective watermarks, as well as confuse the image source and intuitively configure it with a right-click and save it, do it.

But by saying this, it won’t help much when Google indexes your images and displays them when the user searches for images.