What would you do if you took a Hallmark-worthy, jaw-breaking, awe-inspiring picture, uploaded it to the Internet for the limited purpose of sharing the product of your momentary awesomeness to the online public, and later on, realized that someone “borrowed” your obra maestra? Worse, what if that someone placed your masterpiece in her blogsite with the caption: “Don’t you just love it? I’m so awesome! I know, right?!” What would you do?
You’ll go berserk.
Maybe you’ll glare at the computer screen and scream “That’s mine!!!”, while squelching the urge to slam your laptop against the concrete wall (unless you have P20,000 available for your whims and caprices). Maybe you’ll even kick the table and nearby chairs for Grammy-like effect, and tearfully storm outside for a breather.
But if you put me in that situation, there’s a 99.99% chance that I’ll just gawk, order online for McDonalds’ quarterpounder meal with upsized Coke and fries, plus a side order of chocolate sundae and apple pie, and then gobble the shock away. This is how I imagine myself coping with “cyber theft”. But to spare myself from the trouble of slaving myself in the cross-trainer for hours, I came up with my rule of thumb in uploading pictures to the Internet:
“If it’s too awesome, keep it to yourself.”
Simple to do, right? Not at all. For me, part of the value of capturing beautiful moments in camera comes from being able to share it with others. That is why I feel frustrated whenever I leave my pictures hidden in my camera’s memory card. However, I still stand by my rule because this frustration is overpowered by that fear of someone taking my pièce de résistance (and taking credit for it). That and of course, my fear of gaining another set of tummy flabs.
And so I ask, how do we protect our uploaded pictures from cyber mangkukupits?
-Emmeline Escobillo
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