I have been thinking about easy ways to protect oneself against people ripping off digital artists by using their published work without their consent.
I know you can register works with the US Copyright Office for instance, but if you make a lot of works, it's too expensive. And any free registration site can disappear, become not free, or be a scam.
So I thought of a combination, which is free, easy and might work. It includes sending an email to yourself, but before anyone laughs that away: I only use a certain aspect (the date) of the email, not the email in itself as legal proof.
I'd like some feedback on it, if anyone has any.
In short, the method I thought of is this:
1. Keep original files in SVG/RAW/... format and/or high resolution and never publish these anywhere. These can (help to) prove authorship, but not the date of creation.
2. The day before publishing the work on the WWW, email the image to be published to yourself and/or trusted friends. This can not prove authorship, but it can prove that the work existed at a certain date.
Together thes emight be sufficient copyright protection (?).

I put everything in a longer article here for those that want details.

Would be glad to have any thoughts, comments, remarks, ... (Here or as comments on the article). Thanks for your time and ideas...

Interesting topic.

1. Why to worry about copying when the originals are not published?
   Do you want to prevent others from claiming that the raster copies you published are their work?
   They are far from reproduction in size.
   In my humble opinion those who could turn them to decent vectors by tracing manually, are equally skilled to come up with their own ideas.
   But anyhow, it would be only an inspiration for them -if they are that low in self-esteem-, as you have your own style you can use naturally, but they cannot.
2. I wouldn't trust on the mailing's security. If you send the originals to someone, it will transfer through and/or even be stored on servers somewhere you have no control over.

Lazur URH wrote:Why to worry about copying when the originals are not published?

It's just a question of peace of mind I guess. There's a lot of cowboys out there finding any and every way to abuse others. I have the feeling that if I can't make my "ownership" hard in some way, I will have totally nothing to make my case and will just have to be frustrated and see abuse happen (any kind, don't know which) without any defense. I'd hate that. I don't know exactly what they would find as a means of fraude/theft/... and don't want to think about all possibilities. Just want to have a stick behind the door in case of any necessity.
Also, I want to publish in a reasonable resolution, not some tiny miniature, so that details can stand out somewhat. I hate to see awful bitmaps of good art and don't want to make any too-low-res bitmaps myself. If it looks good on screen, it might look good on a T-shirt or something? I don't know really, it's just a general idea of assuring myself I can make a case if and when necessary, nothing really specific in mind.

Lazur URH wrote:I wouldn't trust on the mailing's security. If you send the originals to someone, it will transfer through and/or even be stored on servers somewhere you have no control over.

True, but I wouldn't transfer the originals to anyone. Those will stay on my hard-disk (plus backup) and never move from there, as in a safe. I would send by email the bitmap export I intend publishing, thereby proving that, at that moment in time, the image already existed.

So, to recap: my original SVG files in my "safe" would serve to prove that I made the image (without proving when I made it, one can tinker with file dates easily); the email would prove when the image was made (without proving who made it, as email accounts can be hacked). The two together would be my defense: the first concerning "who made it", the second "when was it made". No?

The trick of my combination is that, while it is true that it is legally not provable that someone actually wrote a certain email (accounts can be hacked etc), I think it cannot be denied that an email was actually sent at a certain point in time (the ISP can deliver impartial proof). So emails can still serve as "timestamps" on a certain content, which is important when it's one word against another as to who's the original author (the "first", I mean).

You might just upload a copy to Google Drive and leave it. That's a third-party whose records cannot be manipulated by outside actors (other than the NSA). The timestamps and IP addresses will indicate you were the originator with 99.9% certainty.

Still, it all rests on your willingness to challenge another party's claim in a court of law, where your proof can be validated by experts.

tylerdurden wrote:You might just upload a copy to Google Drive and leave it. That's a third-party whose records cannot be manipulated by outside actors (other than the NSA). The timestamps and IP addresses will indicate you were the originator with 99.9% certainty.

Interesting idea, even simpler than email. And as in my email idea, upload a bitmap export and not the original SVG file. Still not sure what would be best, email or Google Drive. Google Drive allows changing the file afterwards, might complicate things. An email, once sent, isn't that easy to change at all. And, anyway, email attachments in Gmail end up as Google Drive files anyway. So maybe email is best, two birds with one stone.
So, in short, keep the SVG files always locally, and before publishing a bitmap export anywhere, email it as an attachment to myself.
Not bad as far as free and simple measures go, no? The SVG proving I created it, the email proving I uploaded it first, before any other appearance on the web.

tylerdurden wrote:Still, it all rests on your willingness to challenge another party's claim in a court of law, where your proof can be validated by experts.

Yeah, I know... I'd probably wouldn't sue anyone anyway. Still, I'd feel better to have some kind of proof... Just not to feel like an utter fool in case something happens, at least I'll have taken some precaution...

In this article for instance (How My Music Was Plagiarized for Profit and How I Fought Back) the guy could use the fact that he uploaded a video on Youtube, timestamped before the plagiarist uploaded his. This helped to, at least, convince Youtube.

"My proof lay with YouTube. Thankfully, I had used each song from “Into Ether EP” in a video leading up to its release. Each upload had an unmoveable date of publication, preceding all plagiarized instances by months. Whether or not these would hold in court, I cannot say, but they were enough for me to get takedowns."

Hi.

There are several ways to hide a watermark or add invincible embedded text/images into your image.
Even with transformations like resize, decrease number of colors etc. the watermarks will survive.
There are commercial and free versions of watermarking software available.

Some background info;
Wikipedia
Digital_watermarking
http://vivliothmmy.ee.auth.gr/377/1/FinalYearProject.pdf
http://borjournals.com/Research_papers/Ap_2013/1252IT.pdf

Commercial software;
http://www.digimarc.com/products/guardian/images

For a list of free solutions see
this page.
and
this page

Thanks for the links!
For steganography I also found a program that runs on Linux with a GUI: SteGUI, but it seems that it's not maintained anymore (?). Didn't test it...
Anyway, don't know if steganography is necessary... Seems a bit of a hassle to me and not worthwhile as someone can take a screenshot and copy the image that way anyway, right? For me it's more about linking the image to me as an image, not as a file, if that makes any sense to anyone .
As for watermarking, I prefer doing that image by image in inkscape so I can position the watermark in the least obtrusive way. But good to know there are a lot of programs out there doing the same, in case...

bartovan wrote: Still not sure what would be best, email or Google Drive. Google Drive allows changing the file afterwards, might complicate things.

You can easily do both: send yourself the file (or to a repository account), upon receipt, save to drive.
Drive will indicate file info: created, opened and modified dates, so best to upload and leave alone. (turn off sync)

tylerdurden wrote:

bartovan wrote: Still not sure what would be best, email or Google Drive. Google Drive allows changing the file afterwards, might complicate things.

You can easily do both: send yourself the file (or to a repository account), upon receipt, save to drive.
Drive will indicate file info: created, opened and modified dates, so best to upload and leave alone. (turn off sync)

Exactly what I thought also finally. Just did it now. Works perfectly.

The way I understand it, copyright is free to begin with. If you drew the picture originally, (or wrote the text, performed the music, etc.) you own the copyright. Period.

Where things start to get expensive, is when you want to set up legal steps to be able to defend your copyright, in case you ever need to.

To my understanding, the simplest thing you can do, is either release your artwork with one of the various licenses that are available (in Inkscape, use.... Hey, what happened to metadata dialog in 0.91??), or add the little copyright symbol to the artwork, with your signature and date. That should suffice for most people, to my understanding. But if you earn a living by selling your artwork, it makes it more worthwhile to do more, or even spend money on lawyers, etc.

Edit
Metadata and License dialog is now in Document Properties. Anyway, be sure to choose a license from there, or type in whatever other license you want.

brynn wrote:The way I understand it, copyright is free to begin with. If you drew the picture originally, (or wrote the text, performed the music, etc.) you own the copyright. Period.

Exact. And most people tend to not understand this, indeed.
The problem is not "getting" the copyright (because, as you say, you have it automatically upon creation), the problem is proving it's you who has it and not someone else who pretends he has. Without further proof, it's simply one word against another. What I was looking for (and have found, for my purposes, with my little system), is an easy, free way of obtaining this kind of proof. Just in case of conflict, to have at least something.

brynn wrote:To my understanding, the simplest thing you can do, is either release your artwork with one of the various licenses that are available (...), or add the little copyright symbol to the artwork, with your signature and date. That should suffice for most people, to my understanding.

Mm. I disagree that a copyright symbol, signature and date is sufficient. Depends how you interpret "sufficient".
It's sufficient (even somewhat superfluous) to "obtain" the copyright (which, as you said, you already have in fact, although putting the copyright symbol and such on the work is still good practice).
However, it's not sufficient as proof in case of conflict. If someone copies the image, edits out the signature and puts his own in place, you have nothing to prove you made it (first). Imagine you and him/her before a judge or third party. You'll show your copy with your signature, he/she shows his/her copy with his/her signature. Then what? How will the judge or third party establish who's lying? (In case he has a bitmap and you the SVG source, you still have something more, but again nothing proves you didn't copy the bitmap and then made an SVG afterwards just to fake ownership).
Or, imagine you make the artwork or design of the century (let's imagine for the sake of discussion a minimalist, easy to copy but "brilliant" concept) and X merrily copies it, puts his name on it and sells it as his own. (It does happen). He even registers it officially with US copyright office, which you yourself didn't bother to do. In that case, he'll send you a cease and desist letter and might even demand payment of you, and you'll have to comply. You'll be eating your nails and drawing tablet watching him get away with it. Well, I would. Maybe it's a character flaw of mine

Anyway, I know there's a lot of frauds out there and I enjoy making their lives harder, not easier . Without going to extremes of paying X good dollars per drawing etc. So I searched (and kind of found) what I wanted with the combination of keeping source files always locally, and before publishing a bitmap, sending a copy of it to myself. The two together prove who made it, and when it was created. In some way at least.

If ever I would conceive the work of the century, which I don't count on doing , I would register it officically however. But just for a minimum of peace of mind, my little trick does it for me. I think.