# Tracking copyrighted images across Internet



## RichardC (Jul 22, 2015)

Somewhat new to LR, and using v.4.4, though will probably move to CC soon.

I am looking for a way to be able to search for any of my images that may have been scraped from my websites or the sites I've sold rights to, to discover unauthorized use.  My first thoughts are that it might be do-able through metadata.  I know there are commercial services that offer such services; however, I have to believe, with all the current indexing of the Internet, that one could be able to schedule an ongoing search.

Thoughts???


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## LouieSherwin (Jul 22, 2015)

Hi I've found one. I discovered it while playing with Google image search. Google apparently uses a pretty interesting search that uses the actual image pixels instead of metadata. Unfortunately most image sites including the most common in use strip almost all of your metadata. And even with the metadata that they do keep they are all over the map in terms of how they store, label and index it for search or viewing. 

I only upload low resolution images, include a watermark of some kind and simply expect that there will be some additional usage of those. The vast majority of people who are casually copying images are just doing so for personal use. 

The best protection against potential abuse is to register all your published images with US Copyright Office. Then if some big organization makes unauthorized  commercial use of your images you have a solid legal grounds to receive compensation. 

-louie


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