TECH How to protect pics from being copied?

[98SHDiamond]

How does one protect pics from being copied? Are there VBscripts or Java class that is already available?

Here's example of a site where the yacht picture is protected.

http://www.hakvoort.com/page/info

I would like to know where to get code to make it so I can protect my pictures also.

Thanks!

I am thinking using HTMLGuardian...Anyone has experience with this software?

 

[Kleptos]

Not to get ya mad or anything, but there is no 110% way to safeguard your picture, all one would have to do is do a print scren in windows paste it to Microsoft paint, and they can do whatever they want with it. Not to mention the new IE6.0 has a picture save toolbar for each picture on the page

 

[Kabuko]

Originally posted by Kleptos
Not to get ya mad or anything, but there is no 110% way to safeguard your picture, all one would have to do is do a print scren in windows paste it to Microsoft paint, and they can do whatever they want with it. Not to mention the new IE6.0 has a picture save toolbar for each picture on the page

He's quite right, there's no good way to protect a picture that gets viewed on your site. The "protection" that yacht pic uses is basically disabling right-clicking (which can of course easily be bypassed numerous ways, including the ever simple "disable JavaScript").

 

[Kleptos]

In IE6.0, if you put your mouse over any picture, thats not a background image, a little toolbar pops up, allowing you to save, email, or print the current image. So a right click stopper, or some other image protecter wont stop the little ms toolbar from poping up.

 

[Astro]

For some reason, Mozilla didn't have a problem at all with saving that pic.

If you use Netscape, just right click and click on view image. Then you can save it.

Or, just disable javascript and the picture is yours.

Probably the best thing to do is put a small but noticable copyright notice on the image as well as a web site address.

 

[DAN513]

Or the person could just browse their internet cache and copy the pic from there.

 

[SmAssher]

Like the rest of the people said, there is no way to totally keep a pic from being stolen.

Like Astro said, you should probably just put a copyright somewhere on your page.

Here is a script that will keep people from stealing your pics by right clicking (if javascript is enabled on their browser).

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
document.onmousedown=click
var times=0
var times2=10
function click() {
if ((event.button==2) || (event.button==3)) {
if (times>=1) { bye() }
alert("messege");
times++ } }
function bye() {
alert("messege");
bye() }
</SCRIPT>

Put your message in the two spots that it sasy alert("messege");
Using this script, if the person right clicks on your page, an alert box comes up, then they click ok. If they right click again, your second message will pop up, and when they click ok, the message will not go away. There are ways to get around this, but the average internet surfer doesnt know how.

 

[Guest]

http://www.digimarc.com/

This embeds some codes into your picture and provided that the picture is used on the net, is trackable anywhere. You can try and edit the picture in photoshop or what have you and it'll still retain the digital imprint (stealthy mind you).

That's a good start but people can do print screen and crop your image (very easily done, professionally as well) so there really is no way to safeguard against people from it. Put a copyrighted notice on the image itself so they'd think twice about taking it if they're lazy to remove the copyright.

 

[Guest]

Originally posted by NervousClockWatcher
http://www.digimarc.com/

This embeds some codes into your picture and provided that the picture is used on the net, is trackable anywhere. You can try and edit the picture in photoshop or what have you and it'll still retain the digital imprint (stealthy mind you).

That's a good start but people can do print screen and crop your image (very easily done, professionally as well) so there really is no way to safeguard against people from it. Put a copyrighted notice on the image itself so they'd think twice about taking it if they're lazy to remove the copyright.

The free version through photoshop is VERY basic and virtually useless... still doesnt prevent people from taking the pictures...

Also the full digimarc system is extremely costly...

 

[kit99bar]

put a big

www.mywebsite.com

in the pic

 

[nightninja]

if you've ever taken a screenshot of quicktime when its playing something you'll notice that when you paste it, there is a wierd void, or absence of data (transparent sorta) even in BMP, i don't know how they do this, but i recommend looking into that and seeing if you can figure that out

 

[Kleptos]

This little fix came to me in a dream, it probably wont work but it might. Put your image into a flash movie and display the image, do a keypress for that pesky print screen button to blank out the image so when the jam down on the print screen button the image blanks out. May be way off base, but it just might work.

 

[The Bastard]

Originally posted by Kleptos
This little fix came to me in a dream, it probably wont work but it might. Put your image into a flash movie and display the image, do a keypress for that pesky print screen button to blank out the image so when the jam down on the print screen button the image blanks out. May be way off base, but it just might work.

Yeah that's ingeniuse. I'm not familiar with Flash but I know enough that it has coding for specific key reactions...good idea!

Also, the quicktime suggestion is worth looking into as well. You need quicktime to view PNG file formats due to the lack of support from IE in it's native state, even IE6 doesn't seem to work with PNG, but that'll really cheese off your visitings having to download QT if it's not on their machine already just to view your image.

 

[Kabuko]

Of course, pressing the printscrn button isn't the only way to take a screenshot...

 

[speedfreak]

Originally posted by DAN513
Or the person could just browse their internet cache and copy the pic from there.

right on bro'

All you have to do is hold the mouse over the image and the file name displays in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
If you see it on a web page then a copy of the image is in your Temporary Internet Files folder.

You can use Java to prevent the image from being copied.
Here is an example:
http://www.webmarketingnow.com/tips/javascript-image-copyright-protection.html

But, to really secure the image as yours you should add a digital watermark so that if it gets reused you can prove it was your image. But as others mentioned they cost $$.
AlphaTec http://www.alphatecltd.com
Digimarc http://www.digimarc.com
Signum http://www.signumtech.com
AlpVision http://www.alpvision.com

If you want to catch people, SysCop searches the web for your marked images in use.
http://www.mediasec.com/products/index.html

Screen captures are tough to beat. I would agree that video is the best deterent, temporary video streams even better. There are also watermarks being developed called adaptive digital waterwarks that are buried right into the actual pixels of the image. Sort of like those 3d pics that look like nothing but static until you stare at them cross-eyed for 10 minutes.

I worked with a company that sued someone over images stolen from their site. Frigging attorneys cleaned up and all the webmaster had to do was remove the images. There's not much financial recourse unless someone is selling your images or profiting somehow. It also matters whether it's an illustration, photo, video etc...

And as others mentioned, you should create a logo, trademark that http://www.uspto.gov and apply the logo to your images, which should then be copyrighted http://www.loc.gov/copyright/ . You can file the forms http://www.loc.gov/copyright/forms/ yourself for under $100. This gives you two areas of infringement if it's reused without modification. In which case you will need about $200/hr. for a decent attorney to sue them.

Theft has and probably always will be an unfortunate feature of society. Peer pressure is often the best deterent.

 

[RONIN-1]

those no right click java scripts are pretty useless cuz there are countless ways of bypassing those scrips..... even without "disabling the javascripts in your IE"

 

[Kleptos]

i know in IE6, you can just click and drag the picture up to the address bar and you have full control of the image, you can save, print, etc.... Its very hard to keep an image away from everyone.

 

[nightninja]

i figured out how they stop you from taking screenshots of quicktime video and the like, they use directX layering.. so unless you can figure that our... use that flash idea its ingenius. I never would of thought of something like that...... its not fool-proof but its proly the best your gonna get, there is always some way to get by security. unfortunatly......

they will never be completly safe if you put them on the net...

 

[Guest]

>>Yeah that's ingeniuse. I'm not familiar with Flash but I know enough that it has coding for specific key reactions...good idea!<<

Not quite good enough. You may fool joe schmoe, but what about simply clicking on the desktop (disabling the window) and hitting printscrn?

 

[CruD]

There is no way to stop it. Hell, someone could just use a camera and take a picture.

 

[5Gen_Prelude]

Turn off all the 3D acceleration settings in your display options and you can capture still images. It's only because it's superimposing the video image into the VGA stream that windows simply doesn't see what is being displayed. Once the processor has to do all the work, windows is what is updating the screen and can be captured just like any other part of the screen.

 

[georgelb]

^^^ exactly. and if even that doesnt work you can use programs (like hypersnap) that capture directX.