# Main > Technical Support and Notices >  WIPs and the public domain

## Straf

As soon as you put anything online it's in the public domain. It doesn't matter how many Cs you put in circles someone is going to rip it off and use it for their own gain. I'm lucky in that I have no talent to steal but many others do have. There is nothing to prevent visitors to this site from downloading maps and taking them elsewhere for their own use. Can we open a discussion on safeguarding the IP of the artist in some way? For example non registered users can only obtain a limited resolution and/or anyone downloading an image has their session ID embedded into the image somehow.

i say this because a friend has had a map shared somewhere it shouldn't.

Thanks.

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## Mouse

Hey Straf  :Smile:  

This isn't the first time we've had this conversation at the Guild.  There are lots of other threads about copyrighting and protecting things.  In fact I think Robbie mentioned something about the possibility of having a watermark automatically stamped onto anything that's downloaded from the Guild, but I can't remember which thread it was on, or what came of it.  It was in a thread where Redrobes took pains to describe how to do home-brew steganography...

I'll go and see if I can find it for you  :Smile: 

EDIT:  Yes here we go - its right here.  https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...l=1#post307537 You might want to point your friend over there for a few ideas on how to protect things  :Smile:

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## waldronate

In the US, the term "public domain" specifically means that the bit of IP in question is out of copyright protection. Again in the US, copyright is a limited-term legal monopoly granted to a creator of intellectual property in return for the IP in question entering into the public domain at the end of the term (passage of many successive Mickey Mouse Protection Acts by the US Congress has made the term of protection very lengthy at the moment). The precise meaning of copyright varies from country to country, as does the granted protection and recourses.

As Mouse points out, this topic has been discussed before and there aren't any good solutions. A motivated thief will steal no matter the attempts made to prevent it. All that you can hope to do is demotivate the thief, which is also very likely to demotivate the potential client as well.

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## Straf

Thanks, I'm reading through that thread.

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## Voolf

Straf, you can not really do anything about that. If you post it online, there will be always a way to take it if somebody is determined. The only way to really protect your work is to make a watermark before post it online. Also resize it is a good idea. Watermark prevents people from claiming image as theirs (unless they will play in PS to remove it, that is also a case). Resizing the image is a good marketing way to advertise your work. There is a chance people who like it would like to buy a full size version. Smaller version also discourage people to steal it, because it is simply too small to use for different purposes.

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## Redrobes

Yeah - check through that thread that mouse posted a link to for a quick, dirty and free way of doing a watermark that is quite hard to remove.

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## waldronate

Note that watermarking doesn't protect your work from being stolen and resold in any way. All that watermarking does is provide a means to demonstrate authorship, which in some jurisdictions can be used as leverage to seek damages from the thief: someone still has to spend the resources to locate the offending display of the copyrighted IP and then prove the offense to an appropriate authority. Watermarks only help with the "proof" part.

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## Falconius

Well watermarks also destroy the image data affected by the mark which means that the thief actually has to do some work to clear it, and in the case that he shares it with the watermark the mark also should give proper attribution.  So beyond the pure legalities involved it does do something, unfortunately it also mars the image.

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## waldronate

My badly-made point was that inadvertent thieves ("just pinning it to my wall" or "posting it here on NavelLeaflet without attribution or context so that I can find it later") don't care about copyright and folks that knowingly sell stolen goods also don't care because they will either disappear at first complaint and pop up elsewhere or are in a jurisdiction where this sort of thing is acceptable. It's up to the author to expend their own resources to defend their own works. At the end of the day, it's up to each author to determine how much effort they want to expend in defending past works compared to creating new works.

Visible signatures and watermarks are like locks on doors: they keep honest people honest but don't in any way deter a professional thief. Hidden watermarks and metadata are more like attaching nameplates to items in your home or recording serial number for electronics: they can help prove ownership in the context of an appropriate legal context, but will do nothing without enforcement.

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## Mouse

I think most of the borrowing that I can see going on (and I've seen so many CG maps in so many different and unexpected places now that its obviously quite rife) is more the casual kind where people just don't think about the consequences of what they are doing to the author of the work they so thoughtlessly link to or pin.

If a visible watermark is the best way to deter such grazing pests, then I'm all for it  :Smile:

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## Falconius

> My badly-made point was that inadvertent thieves ("just pinning it to my wall" or "posting it here on NavelLeaflet without attribution or context so that I can find it later") don't care about copyright and folks that knowingly sell stolen goods also don't care because they will either disappear at first complaint and pop up elsewhere or are in a jurisdiction where this sort of thing is acceptable. It's up to the author to expend their own resources to defend their own works. At the end of the day, it's up to each author to determine how much effort they want to expend in defending past works compared to creating new works.
> 
> Visible signatures and watermarks are like locks on doors: they keep honest people honest but don't in any way deter a professional thief. Hidden watermarks and metadata are more like attaching nameplates to items in your home or recording serial number for electronics: they can help prove ownership in the context of an appropriate legal context, but will do nothing without enforcement.


Ah I see.

@Mouse Visible watermarks also look terrible, so it does more than deter grazing pests.  Look at all the flack that guy got a few months ago when he posted good maps, but festooned in opaque watermarks.  And the more subtle watermarks don't deter the random wandering person.

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## Mouse

LOL!  Yes, I do remember, and I was one of the people screwing my face up at it.

I wasn't suggesting anything as extreme as that, but something far more subtle. You never know - we might start a trend in _beautifully_ watermarked maps  :Razz: 

EDIT:  I do hope that Straf's friend doesn't think I'm being flippant.  I really do know just how it feels.  One of mine was borrowed - remember?

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## Straf

OK I have read through that other thread. Lots of good information in there. The stegosaurus thing sounds good. I'd heard of it before for sending secret messages in full view. You can send whole texts but suspicion may arise if the file size seems a bit large for the image or whatever. Anyway, I digress - the digital watermarking by hiding the text within the image is a pretty good idea. It shouldn't even be visible.

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## Mouse

An invisible dinosaur!

Wicked!   :Razz:

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## Straf

It helps to hide the text  :Very Happy:

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## johnvanvliet

first DEFINE!!!! what you mean by "ip" , there is really no such thing as "intellectual property " 
- that is a made up thing 
not until one puts it down on paper or object dose it then become the EXPRESSION of the idea 
and it is that EXPRESSION that can be temporally restricted 



> Can we open a discussion on safeguarding the IP of the artist in some way?


*copyright law?
patent law ?
Trademark law ?*

all 3 do different things ( and do them DIFFERENTLY) , if you lump them all together you have a royal mess of contradictions 

and define for WHAT countries ???????

the WTO gave  Antigua a free pass on IGNORING usa copyright law




> The stegosaurus thing


yes a dinosaur 

did auto correct change that on you ?
if not....... 
then please use a dictionary " steganography "

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## Redrobes

The text is supposed to be visible - but barely. Its not steganography, its just putting a water mark onto the image. In the same way as you get a water mark in paper - its supposed to be just visible. The idea is that when applied to an image its supposed to be difficult to reconstruct the image without the watermark. If you apply the water mark to a black and white image then its no good because you can just contrast enhance and you make it go away but to a colour image with a lot of detail its hard to seperate the words from the detail in the image and the water mark is not so conspicuous as to detract from the image.

If you want to apply a code to the image so that its fully invisible but you can detect that it was yours then you need to buy a proper application to do it and in any case, it will hold up to only so much image transformation before you can remove it. Normally that means that the image is also corrupted to the point that you wouldn't want it any more.

You have to decide on what sort of protection your looking to achieve. If you dont want people taking your image and using it in their game, or they take it and repost it claiming its not theirs but its cool anyway and you have a problem with that then dont post it in the first place. If you dont want them to repost it and claim its their own then use a water mark. If they have a habit of trying to remove the watermark, repost it and still claim its their own then use an invisible code and then lawyer up.

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## Mouse

Oops - my bad!

Sorry John!

Perhaps my little dinosaur joke with Straf was a little inappropriate, given the serious nature of the thread.  But I really didn't mean to upset anyone.

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## Straf

OK, so my stegosaurus joke wasn't funny. Sorry  :Very Happy:  Also I appear to have been using terms such as 'IPR' and 'public domain' erroneously. 

Having read through the other thread I have a better appreciation of how difficult this is. Displaying anything anywhere does not prevent its unlawful use. I didn't realise that just by creating something automatically gives you the right to it. I can remember years ago being told that mailing yourself a copy of whatever it is you wanted to prove was your work was the only way as the date on the stamp would show that it had to be created on or before that date. 

It was suggested to me that posting maps, images or pieces of work online may cause copyright issues for potential publishers because if it's already publicly accessible then a potential publisher might have difficulty securing full rights to the work. Apparently they can get rather picky about these things. Even fan art and fan fiction can cause their hands to hover over the big red button labelled 'Lawyer hotline' because if an author inadvertently uses a plot that's been created in fan fiction then the author of said fiction may try to sue the author and creator of the world - or their publisher. 

The main thing I was wondering is if there is a way to safeguard, and as it turns out there is - like Redrobes says - don't post it. I like the watermark idea and I also like the dino steganograph as well. (I'm assuming that steganography is the practice and the 'device' itself is a steganograph) These will offer some kind of protection but does a statement have to be made or is copyright to be assumed unless stated otherwise that it's OK to use/republish?

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## Falconius

I think someone mentioned earlier, or on the other thread, that unless otherwise noted that all rights are reserved to the copyright owner (the creator).  So you don't have to take any special action for it to fall under legal protection (meaning something actionable in court).  And indeed I would suggest that publishing works or sharing them is one of protecting them because all these places use time stamps, and are third party, and so I would assume are valid evidence as to ownership (as well as having all the creation files if you have a big enough hard drive to save that stuff).

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## Straf

Thanks Falconius. I do know that actual ink on actual paper takes precedence over digital information, especially if a development story can be followed. This applies in laboratory research when developing a formula, for example. I guess keeping the early creation files is also important as it provides an audit trail.

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## damonjynx

Interesting thread. I indy publish bits and pieces, my own work and others, and I'd like to create an OGL setting for my favourite rule system, Legend by Mongoose Publishing, that includes the magic system from a licensed, published setting that isn't OGL also by Mongoose, who unfortunately, no longer have the licence. The only way I can see to include it with no legality issues is, firstly to make sure there are absolutely no references to the licensed property and either pitch my setting to and have it published by Mongoose, or if they're unwilling to publish, ask permission and come to some arrangement, fiscal/advertising or some such with Mongoose. Obviously, if I wanted to, I could just rip it off and modify it slightly so that it's "different" enough that I won't get sued for plagiarism or breach of copyright, the problem with that is 1) I'm not that type of person and 2) by doing that it wouldn't have the same flavour and IMO would wreck it. But as we all know, there are folk out there, greedy SOB's, that don't care about whats right and would do just that...

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## Mouse

Unfortunately, its those SOBs that make showing creative works for helpful criticism from other creative people, a total nightmare!

I wonder just how many truly _fabulous_ pieces of art there are in the world that no one has ever seen... and which no one _will_ ever see... just because the author has decided that it simply isn't worth the hassle of trying to prevent the mauling all such things of beauty seem to get the moment they are released into the public domain?

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## Straf

What I am learning very quickly is just how much I don't know about so many things. I am receiving a great education about many different things here  :Smile:  I hope I can give something back somehow.

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## Redrobes

> I wonder just how many truly _fabulous_ pieces of art there are in the world that no one has ever seen... and which no one _will_ ever see... just because the author has decided that it simply isn't worth the hassle of trying to prevent the mauling all such things of beauty seem to get the moment they are released into the public domain?


This x10.

I know I have a ton of great apps and code projects I have written which will not see the light of day outside of my PC. The mauling when I did release something was eye opening. Even though you know its all made up and just trolling and even if it bothers me not a jot, its the time spent dealing with it, or dealing with overcoming other peoples reactions to it that is so not worth it.

Take for example the band Coldplay. Here is a link to their wikipedia discography. Note the album charting positions - esp for the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldplay_discography

And here is a link talking about why has it become cool to hate Coldplay.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...t-stories.html

What gives ? I don't get it. But know this, if you put something new out there, even if some people love it, there will be others who generate hate for no real reason whatsoever. I like to think of those people as those who probably dont make or do anything at all - other than to hate other peoples work full time.

This Guild tho is pretty exceptional in this regard which is probably why I stick around...   :Smile:

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## damonjynx

> This x10.
> 
> 
> 
> This Guild tho is pretty exceptional in this regard which is probably why I stick around...


+1 Gazillion-trillion-billion. Even though I have a very low opinion of my own work that I've posted here, in comparison to the works of art I see here on a regular basis, the support and encouragement from other members is mind blowing. I've been on a few forums and posted comments on the odd YouTube video and the amount of vitriol on them is astonishing.

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## Straf

It's not just online either:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-38234239

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