[STOCKPHOTO] Re: Comp question to photographers in general.

[Ed Verkaik]

I'm on digest so didn't see your replies until now,... but the site some of
you saw was our crappy old site which will be discontinued. The new ones are
still offline until testing is finished.
photoshop_domain

No examples of image protection that I can find on their site...

They don't need examples. The method is fully explained - each image is
broken up into small panes and given a new filename in the cache. The only
way to get a useable image would be to manually sort through the bits and
recombine them like a jigsaw puzzle. I think that's disincentive enough.

After a rummage, I found the following statement: HTML Guardian can
protect your entire website, with one exception - it can not fully
protect images.

And that is partly because images *can* be recombined (with great effort)
and also because there may be ways to get a software screen grab to bypass
them. For that, we have watermarks.

As for casual stealing of web site thumbs, I think there is a point
where protecting yourself from minor thievery isn't worth the cost.

A fool's paradise... the increasing importance of web advertising combined
with the difficulty and expense of fighting infringement cases means
stealing thumbs will become both more common and more valuable to many
websites. Even your thumbs spread all over the web will be enough to
undermine your RM marketing efforts. A "low res" thumb is just fine for spot
web ads.

But I suspect that their solemn silence on the subject of searchability
is because a Guardianized page will remain invisible to Google as well

You really shouldn't speculate about something you know nothing about on a
public forum. Asking them by email would have gotten you an answer... that
the site is 100% indexed by Google with their software installed. They say
nothing because it is taken for granted.

the sort of interference with your client's web experience that drives

them

from your site, into the far more open arms of your competitors.

Acceptable losses. The only clients I want are those that respect what I
have and do, and see the value of my images as greater than their minor
inconveniences.

Ed Verkaik



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[Jim Hargan]

Post by Ed Verkaik

But I suspect that their solemn silence on the subject of searchability
is because a Guardianized page will remain invisible to Google as well

You really shouldn't speculate about something you know nothing about on a
public forum. Asking them by email would have gotten you an answer... that
the site is 100% indexed by Google with their software installed. They say
nothing because it is taken for granted.

No, I shouldn't speculate without clearly labeling it as such -- which I
did, as your quotation shows.

It is not up to me, as a prospective customer, to dig out important
points that are missing from a sales pitch. If the salesperson wants me
to consider a point, he should include it.

Major points missing from the Guardian site's sales pitch:
- No example of an image
- No mention of search (and Google isn't the only engine)
- Doesn't use its own technology

(BTW, I have similar complaints about thin sales pitches from other
product web sites, most recently ACDSee 9 and Delorme XMap 5. In all of
these cases, I make no extraordinary effort to fill in the blanks they
left in their pitch. I simply move on.)



Jim Hargan
Images of North Carolina
nc.HarganOnline.com
www.HarganOnline.com


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