Forecasts
predictions of the cutting edge
Guarding your Assets
Trudy Levy
Image Integration
How may your image be stolen?
Let me count the ways
- Drag and drop to your desktop
- Right click on the MS mouse
- Save as from the menu
- Download your original - if your site is not secure
- Link to your image - stealing your bandwidth too.
People have been pondering this problem since they put digital images up on the web. Maybe you were told to use tiny low resolution images which no one could use. Of course no one can see your great details either, and now the technology allows you to show more. ( See Pyramids ) Then there is "watermarking": Digimarc* is one leading developer of digital watermarking technologies and there is Epson's Image Authentication System(IAS)* which provides image authentication directly from the point of capture in a standard JPEG file. This allows you to prove ownership or protect images from being changed, but what about an digital equivalent to an alarm system to prevent their theft in the first place. How about encryption like they do your Credit card? Can you encrypt your image? YES YOU CAN!.
For those code junkies who like to do it themselves, there is a Java script on JSP [Java Script Planet] which you can download* for free. This script only prevent MS Internet Explorers from right clicking your images, but it is a beginning. For a little more security and for only around $30, there are two shareware programs -, SecurityPlus by Softbyte Labs * and Cryptapix by Briggs Software* which will encrypt practically all your files including images and CAD documents and decrypt them on the fly when presented with the appropriate password. This is a great solution for collaboration online. If people get to your site where they aren't supposed to be, they won't be able to access anything. For those sites who welcome all comers, it is not very practical.
Just arriving on the market however may be the solution for these sites. Basically your surfers download a viewer from your site to view the images which have been encrypted. They can not link or copy the images, nor do they need a password, but they must download the viewer from your site. In some instances this means they have to restart their browsers which is a nuisance for the casual visitor, but once the plug-in viewer is loaded, they will never notice it until they try to drag and drop the image. Two companies pursuing this approach are Artiscope* and Alchemedia. Alchemedia* is also offering their encryption program as a online service called Clever Content* on which artists can currently create protected portfolios of 10 images for no cost. It is also good place to evaluate their viewer's capabilities. The encryption is done on the fly by a filter which you install on your web server as the browser calls for the image is called. Your image files themselves do not need to be converted.
Coming full circle is Xerox's ContentGuard which it has been developing at its famous Park. It combines watermarking and encryption and hopes to make publishing on the Internet truly feasible. The ContentGuard* suite tracks usage and fee collection; specifies rights and permissions for digital content and incorporates encryption and user authentication technologies as well as E-commerce. There is ContentGuard Publisher, a server product that converts documents from many popular formats (Word, PDF, PowerPoint etc.) to encrypted self-protecting documents. During this conversion, the publisher can attach one or more labels (terms and conditions) to the document. The other half is ContentGuard Marketplace, an online storefront that can be integrated with popular E-commerce servers and provides user customization of self-protected documents at the point of sale. So now you can protect your visual assets or at least close the door.
2/20/00
Related Links
Digimarc
Java script on JSP
SecurityPlus by
Softbyte Labs
Cryptapix by Briggs Software
Artiscope
Alchemedia
Clever Content
Xerox's ContentGuard
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