At the DEMOfall Technology conference in San Diego on September 8th, start-up company Photrade introduced what many thought was “yet another photo sharing service.”

Online photo sharing is, of course, a great idea but it’s pretty hard for a start-up to compete with the likes of Yahoo’s Flickr, Google’s Picasa or a host of other sites like Shutterfly, Snapfish or Photobucket. But Photrade has a twist that could make it a good choice for families wishing to share photos yet maintain at least some control over privacy.

Like other photo-sharing sites, you have the option of password protecting your photos, -- but Photrade takes this a step further by letting you encrypt photos so they can’t easily be copied, printed or otherwise used without permission. I use the word “easily” because there’s no way to completely protect digital data -- but standard screen copying methods like the Windows Print Screen key won’t work

The idea, according to Photrade founder Andrew Paradies, is to protect the rights of people who don’t want their photos misused online. One example given is online pictures of kids that, if unprotected, could be reposted on other sites. Paradies showed me a picture of a somewhat overweight teenage boy with the word “failed” superimposed on the image, implying that he’s a failed athlete because of his size. Had the picture been posted on Photrade, it would have been a lot harder for someone to have misused the picture. Also, if someone links to your picture on the site, you get notified and you have the option to block that link.  

Although this isn't yet possible, Paradies envisions that it will eventually be possible to post encyrpted photos on Photrade and display them on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. That would allow kids to post their picture but still have control over who sees them and who can copy them.  Of course, as with any digital data, kids still need to use judgement because there is no way to completely prevent unauthorized use.  

Encryption or no encryption, I still recommend that kids never post anything that they wouldn't want their grandparents, future employers and future love interests to see.

Photrade can also be used to help photographers sell their pictures. Paradies envisions a small cottage industry for budding professional photographers who can sell their photos for whatever the market will bear. There are plenty of stock photo agencies that sell pictures but, says Paradies,his company will let photographers set their own price and keep 80 percent of the revenue -- a much bigger chunk than most agencies pay photographers.