I was recently contacted by a fellow beading artist, Janine Learner, regarding photos I took for an item listed in my Etsy shop. She found these photos, amongst others, in use on another mass-marketing jewelry site. The pictures were of a jewelry set I created from a tutorial Janine sold me in the recent past. Janine takes an active interest in the use of her patterns and tutorials and, therefore, was able to easily recognize my work and pictures. I was understandably upset to view my artwork on a third-party website without my permission. I emailed the outfit immediately and requested they remove my photos from their unethical website, but to no avail.

The internet is a powerful marketing tool for products of all kinds and relies on great photography to drive sales. Piracy of these great photos has become rampant in recent years because it’s not only easy, but seemingly a victimless crime. Fraudulent mass-marketing sites use stolen photos to sell counterfeit–and, likely, non-existent–products to unsuspecting customers who have little ability to obtain refunds for items not received.

Photo piracy is a devilish problem to surmount, but we can take measures to make it harder for freebooters to succeed. Using digital watermarks is a start in that direction.  I began watermarking my jewelry images by using digital text overlay (with very little opacity so as not to impact the artwork) but I’ve since learned pirates can either crop or retouch the watermark with simple editing tools and insert their own. Now, I allow the watermark to intrude onto important parts of my images (using bold, legible typeface) making cropping and/or retouching the photos a lot harder to do.

Digital watermark protection is not a 100% guarantee photos will not be pirated but it’s certainly a huge step toward prevention. I urge my fellow artists to use strong digital watermarking as a preemptive measure. Not only will it protect our photos, but it will help thwart fraudulent sales to unsuspecting customers who happen onto illicit mass-marketing sites.

For more information on watermarking, read Bob Gallivan’s blog post (American Kumihimo Society website) here:  Bob Gallivan Blog Post

Pirated Photographic Artwork:  Anne’s Blog

Pirated Photos:  Peacock Beaded Kumihimo Jewelry Set

Visit my Etsy shop here:  AnneGregoryJewelry.Etsy.com