Image theft has been a common problem from a while now. It is always easy to copy or download someone else’s creation available on the Internet that too without seeking their prior approval. The Image search feature of different search engines and photo sharing sites have empowered users to steal images easily.
Another problem is that the images are not fully proctored by copyright laws. It hurts you a lot when you spend your several hours, apply brain to create catchy images, and others use your property quickly. After setting up your WordPress website, you can perform various tricks through which you can stop image theft on your WordPress website. Some of them are complied here below. Just have a look:
All the hard work of designers goes in vain when an unknown person utilizes their image content and show it as his/her own creation without giving them any attribution or acknowledgment. This causes you a great loss when you operate an image or photography website.
In order to stop image theft, you must consider using Plugins like Copyright Proof, WP Content Copy Protection, Tynt Insight for WordPress etc. These Plugins are available in free and premium versions and are easy to use.
Watermarks are quite useful tools for photography websites. You can add a textual copyright watermark to your site's images to discourage downloaders. You can also use a semi-transparent image to watermark so that user's can't download the images displayed on your website.
You can make use of some watermark Plugins to add watermark to images, but this may change the look and appearance of the original image file.
This is an important way to warn people against unlawful image theft and discourage them from using your images for achieving their own professional goals. Just add a copyright notice to your site in plain text as shown here below:
It is highly possible that your site's template may not have this built-in feature. In such a case, you can add a coding (mentioned here below) into the footer.php file of your existing theme. Make sure you use a beautiful theme for your WordPress site that can represent your brand the way you want. You can buy a premium theme from D5 Creation that can take your WordPress web design to the next level. The themes offered by D5 Creations help you create responsive, W3C validated, unique and security-drive themes for your WordPress site.
If you want to boost the security of your site, don't forget to edit the following line of code every year:
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Copyright © <?php echo date("Y"); ?>; <?php echo bloginfo("url"); ?>; <?php bloginfo('url'); ?>; All Rights Reserved. |
Using this method, people can steal your site's images easily by hotlinking into your site. It means that images are hosted on your site and third parties can utilize them as their own without having your prior permission. It causes immense loss to you in two ways: using your site's images without giving you the due acknowledgement and consuming your bandwidth. It may increase load on your site's server and bandwidth usage up to a great extent.
To disable hotlinking on your site, just add this code to the .htaccess file of your site:
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RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?xyz.com [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?bing.com [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC] RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [NC,F,L] |
If you are really serious about stopping image theft on your site, you should add a DMCA batch to your site as soon as possible. The DMCA will take legal action (on your behalf) if someone is using your site's images/content without seeking your prior approval.
When you attach a DMCA badge to your site, it is just like a warning for hardcore image burglars, and they will get afraid of stealing your digital property because of the possibility of facing legal actions. You can also make use of a DMCA Plugin for WordPress to insert DMCA batch on your site easily.
It is not always possible to stop common users from using your images as they don't have any idea about how illegitimate is to use someone else's image and use them for meeting their personal & professional needs.
To trace such people, you can utilize Google Images and conduct a reverse search by entering your image URL or by uploading your images from PC/laptops. Google will display all the available images with similar visual content. In this way, you can find all website operators that are using your image content and ask them to stop using unlawful image.
It is one of the easiest ways to steal images simply by right-clicking on them and selecting “save image”. Just disable right-clicking option on your webpage. This will help you to stop the unauthorized use of your images. You can use WordPress Plugins to disable right-clicking feature on your website.
Photographers and designers toil a lot to create attractive images to make their website popular among users and convey their messages easily and comfortably. But, image theft can make all of their efforts null and void if you don't take it seriously. These are some of the main ways with which you can discourage image theft on your WordPress Website.
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