This article is not about file encryption for images stored on
your hard drive or password protecting them to send by email.
Instead we are discussing how images displayed on web pages can
be protected from copy, save and downloading.
Preventing access from every possible angle is most difficult. The usual options for copy and save are:
Most of these options can also be initiated by using hotkeys such as "Ctrl C" for copy to the clipboard and so on.
One naive method for preventing copy involves the disabling of
the mouse right-click menus, but even without mouse-click the
user still has options via the
keyboard. However, even after disabling all
of these options, whatever is displayed on a page is still at the mercy of screen capture
software and/or retrieval from browser cache.
Site grabbers and image
downloaders can spider a web page just like search engines to
build indexes of files to download. These apps can target
specified file types and collect every one of them from your
website.
In theory, web page encryption should prevent the location of
files linked from a web page. But any encryption based on
JavaScript is a
useless because the web browser finds the decryption
key in the very source that it is supposedly protected. To
display the page, the browser needs to decrypt it and
once decrypted you are back at square one again with the
unprotected page on display with all of its HTML and source code.
While the page may have been delivered to the browser in
encrypted form, the images stored in browser cache are not.
Contrary to what some "copy protect" developers claim, it is
impossible to prevent copy using client side scripting such as
JavaScript. It is also impossible to prevent copy without using a
plugin (by installing extra software) that is empowered at system level system
to control and manipulate cache. Anyone making claims to the
contrary is preying on the user's and possibly their own
naivety, and these include all protect solutions that use html
encryption.
There are solutions that are secure but they are not available
for all operating systems (OS).
Today's OS fall into distinct family types such as Windows, Linux,
Android, MacOS, etc. The only image protection solutions that
are effective can be used by Windows OS only. Windows can
support proper protection functions and is considered stable to
warrant development time and an adequate life expectancy. All
other OS either cannot support proper copy protection or are too
unstable to survive a rollout, ie: by the time your user
upgrades to the latest update that OS will be
outdated.
There is no solution that will adequately protect content that
can be used with all operating systems. Yes, there are solutions
available for all OS but they offer no protection from Print
Screen or screen capture.
Secure Image Protection is one example and it is supported
on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. As well as providing
protection from save and downloads, the image files are
encrypted and domain locked to the owner's website and cannot be
used anywhere else. Consequently such images are most secure
while stored on the web server and are safe even from your
webmaster.
But there is a more effective solution and one that is safe from
all copy including screen capture.
CopySafe Web Protection is the most secure protection for
images but does have one limitation. It is supported across all Windows versions since XP
only. However that does amount to 92% of all
Internet users. The remaining 8% is a mixture of
OS, 2% of which are comprised of search engines and media
grabbers.
CopySafe Web is the most secure solution for displaying
encrypted images and it is the encrypted image that activates
the CopySafe plugin when it loads.
CopySafe Web can be used with all types of web applications
CopySafe Web can be added to any web page regardless of which
programming language is used for the page. If you are
using a CMS and/or have limited HTML skills, ArtistScope
provides a variety of free modules for integrating CopySafe Web
with most popular CMS solutions:
The ideal solution for copy protecting web content is by not
using any of the popular web browsers at all, but instead using
a web browser that is specially designed to protect the content
that it displays. Such a web browser needs to display generic
web pages and media but without providing any options that can be
used to save, print and copy the page or download any
media displayed on that page.
Today there are a few custom web browsers available that claim
to satisfy these requirements. Some are merely reskinned IE
engines that still expose browser cache and some others have
been designed to restrict some save and copy options. But the
mistake that most custom browser developers are making is that they
are trying to support all operating systems (OS) and that is where
they fail because proper copy protection is not possible on
Mac and Linux based OS.
There is only one web browser that is safe from all methods and copy and save, and it is supported on all Windows OS since XP. Unlike pretentious "secure" browsers, the ArtisBrowser provides:
Even when the page and media is on display in the web browser,
nothing can be copied in any way... that is, without using a
camera to take a photograph of the computer screen. The
ArtisBrowser is the most secure
web browser and the only web browser that can
effectively protect web page and media from all methods of copy
and save.
ASPS is not just a web browser. Instead it is a server to
browser solution that has been designed from end-to-end with
copy protection in mind. Web pages assigned for use by the ASPS
Web Reader are delivered in encrypted format from the server and
they can only be decrypted by the ASPS Web Reader, thus creating
a most secure tunnel between your site and your visitor.
Intercepting this page is useless as it cannot be deciphered
except by ASPS and it cannot be hacked.
The ASPS filter can be installed on all Windows
servers/computers running IIS since XP and all Linux servers.
ASPS encryption does not affect the web application or
programming language used to create web pages because it
encrypts and delivers the page after it has been assembled by
the server. So it doesn't matter if your website is based on
Sharepoint, PHP, ASP.Net, Classic ASP or good old static HTML.
Consequently any and all CMS applications like DotNetNuke,
Drupal, Joomla, Moodle and WordPress can be run from a ASPS
website.
No special treatment like encryption or conversion is required
as the only preparation required is to add a line of HTML before
the page's DOCTYPE statement. So to protect pages you add this
tag and any pages not including that tag will not be protected
and redirected to open in the user's default web browser. This
way you can cerate doorway pages and leave sections of your site
accessible to normal browsers and then most securely protect
only those sections or pages that are critical to your mission.
The ArtisBrowser can be
downloaded from their demo site. After download, simply
follow the links for "Guided Tour' to explore a variety of
different media that can be protected by ASPS.
Click for more Copy
Protection resources.
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