William Kent

William D. Kent, born 1951 in Melbourne, Australia, is the founder and Managing Director for ArtistScope software solutions. William began creating art in his early teens, experimenting with various painting and sculpture techniques, exploring different painting styles, galleries and attending life drawing classes. After high school William got into screen printing and studied at the Melbourne College of Printing and Graphic Arts where he topped his class every year and was invited to study a journeyman's course that encompassed all of the allied printing trades up to and including book binding.

William's first business provided fabric printing for the clothing industry. But being booked for seasons ahead meant nothing when Gough Whitlam's goverment trashed the clothing industry overnight with their import tarif cuts. Every facet of the clothing industry including shoe makers closed down overnight. Some went into hiding because they could no longer pay for imported knitting machines that had just arrived at the docks. For a fresh start William moved to Sydney where he found partnerships with advertising agents and display makers, only to find that none could keep their end of the bargain.

William's inner city studio for Kent Displays became known for its creativity and dedication to schedule. Consequently he was soon catering for most of the museums around inner Sydney, film/commercial props, international events and trade shows for special clients, like the ones that want to win best stand at the show. William reckons that the most important key to success in that industry is turning up on time, because what you might be creating is useless if it is not ready on time.

When computers became a most useful tool, William found that the software that he was using needed to be more sophisticated. So a journey into online publishing began only to find that artists were reluctant to show online where their art could be so easily copied and plagiarised. That discovery led to the founding of the International Art Contest and the research and development of a means of protecting images on the Internet. The ArtistScope company, incorporated in 1997, has been the pioneer and innovator of almost every major development for digital rights management and copy protection. Today their software solutions and services have no comparison.

The ArtisWiki backend uses original source code developed by William and his team.

William still paints and is currently completing a series for a gallery show. The website for the gallery that he shares with his partner will be also be online soon.

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