Copy Protection Techniques

While the best techniques for preventing are explained below, the methods used for saving, copying, download and exploiting online data and media listed seperately as copy techniques.

Copyright

Copyright is a legal right to prevent others from doing such things such as copying and making available online without permission. Things that can be protected by copyright include writing, visual images, music, computer programs and films. Copyright protects the way an idea or information is expressed, but not the idea or information itself.

You do not need to publish your work, to put a copyright notice on it or to do anything else to be covered by copyright — the protection is free and automatic. There are no forms to fill and there are no fees to be paid. You do not have to send your work to anyone else. A work is protected automatically from the time it is first written down or recorded in some way, provided that it has resulted from its creator’s skill and effort and is not simply copied from another work. For example, as soon as a poem is written, or a song is recorded, it is already protected.

Copyright is international and works are protected in most countries.

Copyright vs.Copy prevention

Copyright will not prevent anyone from copying and using your work as their own, except where damage to reputation or punitive damages can be claimed. In most cases, the infringement will not be known and even if detected, the risk of not winning compensation to even cover court costs is extremely high.

Copy prevention

Prevention is better than cure!

If you don't want it copied, then do not make it easy for pirates to do so. Instead remove the temptation by making it as difficult as possible to copy. The copy protection techniques reviewed below are the best recommendations according to scenario/media.

Image compression

Image compression not only reduces file size dramatically but it can also be a deterent to image theft because when optimised for a desgnated size, it canl look terrible and most likely pixelated when used on a web page at a larger size. Because the resolution of most computer screens are no higher then 96 dpi (dots per inch) it is pointless displaying images in digital medoa or on web pages higher than 96 dpi. But photograhs taken by modern mobile phones, which now produce better quality than the digital cameras of yesterday, take shots that can be as high as 300-600 dpi (depending on phone settings) and about 4000 pixels wide and about 3000 pixels wide, resulting in a file size of about 4 MB. Those width/height dimension are overkill for a web page which might only ever be as wide as 1600 on a wide screen and the dpi is wasted. By using an image editor like Photoshop the size and dpi can be scaled to suit your project, and when saving as JPG one can select a quality setting of 80-90% with no visible loss on quality when compared to teh orginal. For example, by rescaling a 4003000 pixel image of 72 dpi that was originally 4 MB rescaling to 800 pixels wide at 90% quality can produce a new file size of only 70 Kb... reducing file size to 1/57th!

Transparent overlay

By overlaying a transparent (clear) GIF over an image, when a user clicks on the image to save it they can only get the clear GIF. Likewise image grabbers that scrape image locations from web pages to download them will only get the clear GIF. Images can be overlaid by using a tableset and ing the clear.gif inside the table while using the real image as a background for that table cell. A similar effect can be produced by modern CSS using DIV layers.

Image splicing

This technique involves using fragmented images, often refered to as image splicing, where the original image is cut into smaller portions and then displayed as a whole by using a tableset in which each cell contain a portion of the image. Images can be spliced manually which can be a laborious task but software is available to automate the task and even process images in batches by selecting a folder.. producing html templates to use instead of the original image/s.

No right click

The no-right-click technique uses to disable the ability of web broser to display a popup menu when clicking the right-mouse button when MouseOver on an image or highlighted text. While removing the options for save, copy and paste from that popu menu can foil newbies, it does not prevent experienced web surfers from using the keyboard keys. For example Ctrl-A selects all text, Ctrl-C copies to the clipboard and Ctrl-V pastes a copy into an image editor. But the real killer is Ctrl-S which can be used to download the whole web page, with or without all of it parts including images, then saving them to a folder on one's hard drive for easy handling. If one is looking for something specific, then Ctrl-U will show the page-source (html) of the web page to locate the download locations of any image or media that might be desired.

While disabling can circumvent this technique it is also possible to add html to a web page that prevents a page from displaying if is disabled. The page can then either be redirected to another page or hide the page content by using CSS.

Most CMS like WordPress have a selection of plugins for content protection that basically disable right click menus. But any onyone serious about copy protection needs to realise that and CSS are usless on their own when there are so many other methods of exploit available. For example PrintScreen will take a screenshot and even if the PrtScr key is disabled screen capture software can be actioned by any key the user likes. Such screen capture software can slect the area to crop and save to a variety of image formats. The same applies with screen recorder software for copying video.

Link protection

Link protection utilises programming languages like Perl and PHP to deliver digital media stored below site root which it is out of the reach of the public and cannot be downloaded using direct links. PHP and ASP running on teh web server can also be used because it can have permissons to access any file on a server providing the folder read permissions for the worker, be it IIS or Apache. Such scripts can also check which page is requesting the media to prevent unauthorised requests. Consequent any media thus protected can be available for display on the owners website/s only.

Link protection is most effective for preventing the unauthorised use of digital media on other websites (often refered to as leeching) and foiling media grabber software and site scrapers. The more sophisticated file storage services like Amazon S3 and Guest Video can prevent direct access to media and ensure that the website making the request is authorised.

Secure image viewers

Secure image viewers use Java or Flash to display images on a web page. By encapsulating an image in a Java applet or Flash object, the location of the image is not available for direct mouse saves and media grabbers and file scrapers could be foiled if they too were simply looking for image source tags. But while Flash objects and Java applets can protect image locations, there location can be found by viewing page source (Ctrl-U). To prevent those images from being used one needs to also employ encryption and domain lock, thus rendering the images useless on any other website.

Flash objects for copy protecting images were not very effective because they all use normal images without encryption to be able to apply domain lock. Of all the Java applets available for copy protecting images, only two are worth mentioning because they tick all the boxes. Secure Image encrypts images with domain lock that can be viewed on all operating systems (OS). However not all web browsers still support Java applets. Alternatively Copysafe Web also encrypts images and uses domain lock but with a difference... it also prevents all methods of copy including PrintScreen and screen capture. However a Windows computer is required to view Copysafe Web content making it suitable only for closed groups and coporate networks.

Preventing PrintScreen and screen recording

While attempts can be made to prevet PrintScreen by using (like some WordPress plugins) they are not ussuccessful because while they might prevent right-click mouse menus and even prevent using the keyboard shortcut (likw PrtScr), they can have no control over screen capture software that can be actioned by any way a user desires. Also to note is that such scripts never worked on all web browsers in the past and unlikely to not work in days to come.

Consequently the developers of those fake solutions claim that there is nothing better and that their solution is the best that can be done to prevent screen capture. Now they cannot believe such nonsense because the same web searches that collected the scripts that they plagiarised would have also found real solutions that not only do work but they have been around since 1998.

PrintScreen and screen capture can be prevented by taking control over a computer's clipboard and memory. Ever since the first copy protection solutions for web content began evolving way back in 1997, software was available that caused screenshots and screen captures to retun a black image, "black" because the image data had been wiped. The best solutions for copy protection today are the ones that have survived the ever changing Internet climate, namely those either developed by ArtistScope or solutions that have are based on those solutions:

CopySafe solutions require a Windows computer to view. While that can be ideal for closed groups and corporate networks, to support users on all operating systesms (OS) including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android phones the following solutions are beyond comparison to anything available today:

History

PrintScreen has been a keyboard control ever since MS-DOS. But it wasn't until teh late 90s that it was widely used. In fact a survey of artists in 1998 suggested that as many as 98% of artists (including graphic artists) did not know whar the PrtScr key was for. However this may have been because Apple computers had no such key at the time.

Screen capture software was not available until the late 90s. It was only after the revelation that images could eaemory after copy protection solutions started clearing the clipboard.

Link protection was first developed by ArtistScope in 1998 utilising Perl scripts to prevent direct access to digital media, thus preventing direct downloads and web scraping. That release was aptly named Link Protect and it could be used on any website that was enabled to use Perl from a cgi-bin. Link protect was popular when web developers worked with html but today most website owners and developers are using a CMS like WordPress that no longer require any knowledge of what makes a web page.

The transparent overlay technique was first developed by ArtistScope in the late 90s. While it was supported in the Netscape Navigator it failed in Internet Explorer.

Image splicing was developed in the late 90s when web browsers began supporting tablesets. Soon oftware became available that could automate the process and produce a html template containmg the tableset to use on one's web page.

The first secure image viewer was released in 1998 by ArtistScope. Secure Image was the first ever solution for the copy protection of images on the Internet. While copycats provided simpler applets that did no more than encapsulate normal images, Secure Image used encrypted images that were domain locked, meaning that even if their file location was known for downloading, the images would be useless on any other website.

Copy protection to prevent PrintScreen and screen recording was first developed in 1998 by ArtistScope. The CopySafe Web sofware encrypted images with domain lock that could be displayed on an web page. The mere inclusion of such an image actions the browser to switch to protect mode preventing everything displayed on that web from being copied in any way.

 

Please report any errors or typos here.