When
images used in news and advertising are copied or captured in
some way, it is not normally an issue. But the creative and
unique work of artists and photographers should be protected
from capture. But unfortunately, this illegal capture has
become a real problem.
While many web artists are flattered that their images may be
sought, others more dependent on preserving creative concepts
would die before they put their work into what can only be
considered a "copy machine". For artists and
galleries to present their wares on the web, some form of
protection or restriction needs to be introduced.
So artists could exhibit safely and thus share the new medium,
Artistscope began to develop an interest in finding solutions
for image protection.
Early experiments turned up a couple of useful methods that
offered protection of the image from mouse saves, but they
were not developed further as they needed version 4 browsers
(nearly everyone was still using v3 at the time). Still
looking, we eventually explored all the computer languages
looking for a denominator. When we got to Java, we found that
an applet could offer protection of the image from direct
mouse saving. Using development kits licensed from Sun we
looked further.
Unfortunately, posting the news to our art mailing list, which
had by then grown to 1600 members, invited more than what we
expected. Our web site was being hacked almost every day. When
our ISP had no idea of what was going on we set up our own
traps and then found that we were also being probed from
within. The proprietor of the ISP was also looking for our
system.
Our site was off-line so often that we had to relocate, and at
the worst time. The 1998 International Art Contest, which
Artistscope were hosting, had to be relocated as well. After
learning that a provincial ISP can be your worst nightmare we
opted to use Australia's largest and a much more sophisticated
service. We had only just finished the contest scripts when
they had to be completely rewritten for NT.
It wasn't until the end of that year that we finally got
around to packaging the program. After the contest results
were published with great success, we set about packaging our
system. As a means of supporting the contest as an ongoing
event we released Secure Image for sale to the public.
Secure Image was the first image protection system offering
real protection from all the common avenues of copying. The
images are safe on the server and cannot be retrieved by
direct linking, nor from the Temporary Internet Folder.
Secure Image represents the first image protection system
providing security of the image once downloaded. Its inception
and the introduction of image encryption for the Internet
stand as a landmark in Internet technology.
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