Yes, i know, but watermark doesn't necessarily mean ownership. It could be stated in the conditions when you join sp, that there is the option, if you agree, to have images watermarked to protect them from theft. You obviously maintain ownership, but it would avoid (personally speaking...) the hassle of watermarking each image.

logged in members would be able to see sp just as it is now, with no invasive watermarks, but for anyone else it wouldn't be possible to download the clean version.

I don't know what this would require techinically, to be done. But for sure copyright of the image would be unaffected.

Or, an alternative might be to insert some code in the upload page giving the possibility to watermark images with one's username.

I built and mantained a Web site that, among other things, was a online gallery of underwater photographs of marine organisms. We had a policy of free use for gov't, educational, or other not-for profit groups. One of the marine biologists came to me very angry. A consultant who was bidding a job used (her) photos, downloaded from our Website,without permission in their proposal.

I had used some simple JavaScript that disabled right click-save image and displayed a pop up box indicating who to contact to get full resolution images. Since this was not keeping folks completely honest, I was tasked with watermarking thousands of images.

I looked into writing some code that would display a watermark on the images when downloaded, but that was beyond my sixth grade coding abbilities so I punted and ran all the images through photo editing software to add custom watermarks in batches.

Hint for those in the software field: anytime somebody asks you do something hard, use lots of phrases like:

"Hmmm, let me do some research and circle back to you"

"Well, that would be the long tent pole then"

"I would recommend getting the low hanging fruit first"

"This sounds like a pressing issue. Let me make a quick fix then think about a long term, elegant solution".

Automatically generated watermark might be good idea to start with.

Number of photo pages, stockphoto pages do this.

Simple .php script?

few test images:

no abusive layout, no mention of copyright

It looks good. The only prblem i can see is that people might cut off the last half centimeter of a photo...

Is the idea of making the watermark disappear for logged in viewers too complicated? i'm afraid it could mean you two copies of each image should be uploaded, one unmarked and one with the scar...

Just an idea, what if the watermark showed your username instead?

Better: let users add their own watermarks. It's really really easy to do.

To support the learning-impaired, adding a watermark could be an option during upload. Users could even specify the text to use as the watermark.

I of course will choose not to add a watermark.

This could be a poll question: if SP added a watermark option, would you use it?

Josh Lewis wrote:Just an idea, what if the watermark showed your username instead?

That would be the better way to go. I think a watermark that says Summitpost, implies SP owns the photo.

One user has added watermarks to most of her photos, and the photos still get high ratings. If a person finds this process too tedious, then s/he may be uploading too many photos.

you have a good point MoapaPk...
But still, as it seems like there are protection issues for the material posted on sp, i think that maybe a setting for watermarlk on the upload page wouldn't be a bad idea. Of course i know nothing about the technical aspects of implementing this, but that is another question.

We need to hire this guy on SP!