How to copy protect images
 Image theft is not only practiced by far too many people but
there are also far too many services advocating plagiarism and
encouraging it by providing the means to do so. Over the years
the web browser makers have made web page content more
accessible and the search engines have provided services for
special searches to locate and download your media. On top of
this we have hundreds of software developers creating programs
to seek and download your media, and evade any protective
measures possible. These usurpers of your intellectual property
try to justify themselves with statements like "information
wants to be free" when in reality they are most protective of
anything that they have themselves... should they ever steal or
borrow it.
Image protection
The first effective form of image protection introduced for use on the
Internet that worked beyond theory was image encryption developed by ArtistScope in 1998.
Image encryption has many advantages but none the less is not a
perfectly safe solution without including some other techniques
to protected the image from other methods of copying.
This article will endeavor to introduce the threats and some of
the other techniques with their pros and cons:
Overlaying a clear GIF
Overlying a clear image over the main image seems like a clever
idea and it is until someone realizes that there is an overlaid
image. The technique employed here is to protect the image by
placing a sacrificial image in a layer that is superimposed
over the image. The overlaying image being a transparent gif is
invisible on the page and the visitor who tries to save the
image by right mouse click will only be able to steal the clear
gif. That is, until he realizes that the image that he wants is
behind a layer. To get around this copy protection technique
one only has to save the whole page with images included, take
a screenshot or disable JavaScript.
Believe it or not it was ArtistScope who first developed this
technique of using a transparent gif layer. In our quest for a
method to protect images it was the first technique that we
developed and it was quickly passed over as a waste of time
because at the time only the latest web browsers could support
layers. In all other web browsers the effect was the same as
disabling JavaScript with all the content of the intended
layers displayed at the bottom of the page leaving the valued
images unprotected.
Watermark images to protect originality
Watermarking can mean a couple of different techniques for
protecting an image. Some photographers use watermarking to
label photographs that they distribute to agencies. Some naive
photographers actually believe that this form of watermarking
provides copy protection for an image when in fact it is merely
a means of attaching a business card to an image as a tag. The
watermark tag is invisible to eye and can only be seen when the
image is opened in an image viewer that supports such
watermarking techniques. The watermark tag is absolutely no
deterrent to copying or saving from a web page and the image
thief only has to open the image in any image editor and save
it again to shed the watermark tag completely.
Another form of watermarking is overlaying text or another
image onto the image to be protected and then merging. There
are software programs specially designed to do this and most
image editors can also watermark your images, especially if the
they support layers. The technique here is to have the original
image open in the editor and then either type some text to
overlay onto the image or create a new layer with the text or a
ready made transparent logo. When the image is saved the layers
are merged into one to provide the original image with overlaid
watermark. This type of watermarking is a deterrent for people
wanting to use your image because it has been marred and can't
be used in other projects. If it's your logo in the middle of
the image they will definitely not want to use it.
Using degraded images ( over compressed images)
That some people recommend the use of using degraded images is
ridiculous!. It's not protecting the originals because they are
not accessible and it's certainly not going to impress your
visitors or enhance sales if the image in question is
representing your product. So what is a degraded image? The
degradation refers to loss of quality resulting from using
compression on an image. To compress an image you simply open
it in any popular image editor and nominate your desired
quality setting. Compressing to 60% or less will yield a poor
quality image, while most original images (taken from scans of
photos or digital cameras) can easily be compressed to 80 %
without any noticeable loss of quality. A degraded image will
be one that has been compressed to 60% or less and will be
obviously pixilated to of no worth to anyone else's project
(unless they can't find something similar).
Protect images by splicing
The splicing of images can be a deterrent to copying of the
image but is really of little consequence. While a spliced
image may slow down mouse saves of an image it does nothing to
prevent anyone from taking a screenshot or saving the whole
page. Here the technique of "splicing an image" is cutting it
up into segments. To display a segmented image they need to be
re-aligned an a web page which means assembling it within a
table set. That's why saving the page gets the image intact
because the table set gets saved and the visitor can open it at
leisure for a screenshot. Image splicing is not a form of copy
protection at all because the visitor can get the original
after all.
Protect images in Flash
Utilizing Flash to display images will slow down the
copying because the image is no longer recognized as an image
(site and image downloaders) but it can still be copied by
taking a screenshot. Also, there are many programs available
today for decompiling Flash to extract their contents. Flash
used to support some functions for disabling the clipboard but
those functions are no longer supported in the latest versions
of Flash.
Disabling right click mouse actions
Disabling right mouse click can slow down copying but it offers
nothing more than an mild inconvenience to the person wanting
to steal your images. By disabling right click you are removing
the right mouse menu options which include copy, paste, save
as, etc. However a simple page save with all content will get
your web page and all of the images on it saved neatly into a
folder, including your Flash movies, JavaScript et all. Of
course disabling JavaScript in the web browser's settings will
remove any interference to your right click actions.
Disabling Internet Explorer's image toolbar
When the mouse hovers over an image, IE6+’s image toolbar
appears automatically with an option to save the image. Of
course this can be disabled but it's just one of the many
threats that we are faced with as a result of the browser
makers and other advocates of plagiarism proffering more and
more tools for stealing our livelihood.
Preventing web browser "save whole page" copying
First it used be Internet Explorer but today all web
browsers proffer the option of saving a web page "whole" with
all images and other media neatly packed into a folder. This
save action will save the page and collect every component used
on that page, easily evading most copy protective measures that
you may have employed. The only way to prevent this diabolical
saving technique is to use encrypted images.
Protecting an image within an applet
While an image is displayed in a Java applet it can be safe
from mouse saves and site grabbers. However the image can still
be copied by taking a screenshot and the visitor can also view
source to get the location of the image. Ordinary applets
proffered as image protection followed in an attempt to
imitate ArtistScope's security applets (more info below).
Protect images stored in cache
Regardless of how the image is diced or spliced, it can still
be located in cache. Every component of a web page is first
downloaded and saved in the temporary Internet folder known as
"cache". Not so long ago web browsers might itemize the content
of their cache but accessing a file directly was almost
impossible. But today that has all changed and the browser
makers have yet again made our livelihood more accessible to
everyone by enabling direct access with a simple double click.
To protect content stored in trash, that is, to prevent it from
being directly accessible, it needs to be encrypted or domain
locked so that it's inaccessible away from its original
location.
Protect images from direct download and site grabbers
There are numerous programs available for searching web sites
and downloading media. Some specialize in particular file types
and others can be set to look for a desired file type. These
programs, often known as site grabbers, will spider your web
pages like a search engine and list the targets for download.
To protect from this copy/save technique you need to either
encrypt your images or the links to them, or have your pages
delivered on the fly using a scripting language like ASP or PHP
that set some special requirements before delivering the
page.
Protect images with encryption
Encrypted images cannot be displayed without
first being decrypted otherwise they won't be visible.
Image encryption is also the most secure solution for storing
images on a web server because until they are decrypted they
are of no use, even to your webmaster. First developed by ArtistScope in 1998, Secure Image is the
only solution that will display encrypted images on a web page.
Encrypted images created by ArtistScope copy protection
solutions cannot be displayed in any image viewer except
ArtistScope's security viewer and then only from the owner's
web site. The keycode for decryption is embedded into the image
and when loaded, the security applet checks the keycode against
the url displaying the web site. If the encrypted image's
keycode does not match the web site, the image is not
displayed.
Encrypted images are also safe from retrieval from
browser cache (temporary internet files) because the image in
cache is the encrypted version and not one that has been
decrypted. Only ArtistScope's security applet can decrypt the
image and it does that only if displaying it on the owner's web
site.
Encrypted images can
offer the following protection for images:
- Protect images from right click menu options
including save as, copy, paste, etc
- Protect images from browser "save whole page" with
images included
- Protect images from drag and drop save to the
clipboard actions
- Protect the link to the image from direct download
- Protect images from image search engines
- Protect images from site grabbers and remote
downloaders
- Protect images from web publishers like
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Encrypted images created by ArtistScope solutions
(true image encryption) are not to be confused with the mention
of images and encryption by page encryption software that uses
weak JavaScript encryption for html and does not encrypt
the image at all. They may encrypt a link to an image but
they cannot encrypt the image itself. For proper software to
encrypt images please see Secure
Image and CopySafe Web.
Even with all of the above considered, the following image
copy is still possible:
- Taking a screenshot by using the Printscreen key
- Taking a screenshot by using one of hundreds of
different screen capture programs
- Taking a screenshot from a remote computer
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Protect images from Printscreen
Trying to protect images from Printscreen, which is using the
Printscreen button to take a screenshot of the whole screen, is
not easy. In fact from a web browser it's almost impossible. It
is absolutely impossible to protect from Printscreen using
JavaScript or any other client side scripting that is performed
in the web browser. Anyone who tries to tell you that
Printscreen can be prevented using JavaScript is either a fool
or trying to con you. JavaScript does not have access to your
clipboard and cannot prevent screenshots without express
permission of the owner. In Internet Explorer permission is
required and in Mozilla browsers such methods are illegal and
protected by the security limitations of JavaScript itself. To
properly protect from Printscreen a plugin resource is required
that has permission to function at system level.
Protect images from screen capture
To protect images from screenshots and screen capture you need
a plugin with permission to operate at system level. There are
many plugins proffered as screen capture protection but they
are mostly insecure because they rely on detecting a screen
capture program by name and preventing it from functioning or
causing it to crash. The only solution that properly prevents
Printscreen is the CopySafe
solution by ArtistScope which runs as a Windows service to
manage the clipboard when necessary.
Protect from screenshots while viewing remotely
After every precaution has been taken and every preventative
technique employed there is still the possibility that someone
can take a screenshot while viewing your web page using a
remote connection. "Remote viewing" is the process of logging
into another computer from your computer and being able to view
and run programs on the desktop. In effect the person is
operating the other computer remotely and see and do most
things just as if they were using it directly.
Protect images with CopySafe
CopySafe Web is the only
solution that provides protection from all of the copying
threats that we have discussed here.
The CopySafe Runtime is not to be confused with any of the hack
imitations that you may find offered elsewhere. CopySafe was
designed as a universal solution for use on Windows to secure
the livelihood of artists, a cause that ArtistScope has
maintained by overcoming ever emerging obstacles since 1998.
The fact that others may try to imitate CopySafe is just
another example of the piracy and plagiarism that we are all
trying to prevent. Here at ArtistScope we call such creatures
"monkey-brains" because that is all that they are capable of...
they are incapable of original thought and ideas and can only
try to imitate what they see others do. Monkey-brains are
directly related to the same species that is trying to steal
your images.
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