Just how bad is online image theft?
If the results recorded by PicScout, a technology company tracking images across the Web for clients that include Jupiter Images, Getty and Corbis, are to be believed, the situation is very bad indeed. An incredible nine out of ten of the photos that its Image Tracker program finds on websites, and which belong to its customers, are being used without permission and without payment.
“Ninety percent of the images we find have been stolen,” Karen Shemesh, PicScout’s marketing communications manager confirmed in a phone call to the company’s Israel headquarters. “That’s true for photos on commercial sites as well as those on private sites.”
Image Piracy Is Real. And It Also Might Mean They’ve Stolen Your Product!
If the pirates have stolen your images and are hotlinking them, they might be doing it because they’ve also stolen your product!
It’s the worst kind of theft. Not only are they stealing your work and confusing your customers, they’re making you pay for it. They’re stealing your images and your hosting account while they use your intellectual property to enrich themselves.
Fact is, it happens every day. Any Internet Marketer or online merchant who’s spent any time at all on eBay and other auction sites knows thieves routinely steal products and images and hotlink them.
While they’re pumping up their profits at your expense,your brand is getting diluted and your server is pulling files for a thief. That’s not good in any case, but it’s especially bad if you use a shared hosting account. Most Internet marketers and small businesses online use shared hosting. Image pirates put your server and hosting account at risk.
But theft of ordinary graphics is only part of the risk. You’ll be in deep, deep bandwidth trouble if the hotlinker steals your videos and audios, sucking the life out of your server.
How to overcome your image been stolen by others webmaster?
Introduce new Hotlink Alram software.Hotlink ALARM is an excellent way to track down thieves who are illegally steal your images.HotlinkALARM was created and developed by the three of programmer: Willie Crawford, Will Bontrager and Patrick Pretty. Here’s how it came to life:
We discovered an eBay auction featuring one of our products. Trouble is, we never authorized this product to be sold in this fashion and never offered Master Resale Rights.
That didn’t matter to the person conducting the auction. What mattered to him was an eager eBay audience clamoring to buy our product for one-third of its retail price, a dagger in the hearts of our legitimate Affiliates.
Upon further investigation, we discovered the person conducting the auction also was hotlinking to our images. Imagine the nerve! Simply stealing the product wasn’t good enough. He also discounted it and used our images and Testimonials to drive traffic to his website.
Ever try to contact eBay on a Saturday? There’s Red Tape everywhere you turn. Notes to take. Forms to be filled out and faxed. eBay is huge. It’s like trying to get the government to do something.
Something needed to be done, something to help detect these thieves before they can make a fortune at your expense and hurt the pocketbooks of hard-working Affiliates who follow the rules.
We took it upon ourselves to do it.
We made HotlinkALARM so it tells you the URL of web pages that hotlink to your images. You then can investigate to see if they’re also selling your product.
Very few things are more annoying than having images stolen from your website and used without your knowledge and permission on another site.
If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time creating that “just right” look for your website. Maybe you even hire an expensive designer to make your graphics.
The plain truth is that your hard work can go down the drain quickly if an image pirate comes along and steals your graphics.
He even may hotlink the image to your server. In such cases, not only has he stolen your graphics, he’s also using your server bandwidth to make them show up on his website.
That’s nasty business. And it gets even more nasty if the site sells embarrassing products or delivers hate messages or malware. It can even lead to identity theft.
Image pirates may use your graphics to sell products on eBay and other auction sites.
If they’re doing that, they might even have stolen your product — along with your graphics.
Today I’d like to point you in the direction of “HotlinkALARM.” It’s a brand-new software product by Willie Crawford, Will Bontrager and Patrick Pretty.
They were motivated to create “HotlinkALARM” after they discovered a thief had pirated their images and their information product and put it up for sale on eBay — at a BIG discount.
That was some pretty serious motivation!
“HotlinkALARM” protects you against image thieves.
It detects hotlinking, notifies you by email, and starts beaming a substitute image to the website that’s using your stolen graphics.”Hotlink ALARM’ can be customized to suit your needs.There’s a lot of buzz about this product right now, so make sure you check it out.Start protecting your images and products today with “HotlinkALARM!
You can see it here:
http://onlinemarketerz.com/hotlinkalarm
Take care of your images with “HotlinkALARM!”
If you liked this post, buy me a Coffee. (Suggested: $3 a cup of Coffee or $7.5 for a jug)
Tags: HotlinkAlram, image theft, image thieves, images, prevent stolen images
Posted under Product Review