Protecting Online Content
Copy Protection
Copy protection on the internet is partly a contradiction in terms. By the act of publishing an image online, those with the means to to access the file have also, inherently, been given the means to save a copy of it. The web is built on this premise. Despite numerous and often elaborate schemes to prevent printing, screengrabs, right-click saving and even dragging images off the browser and onto the desktop, the nature of the internet ensures that these counter-measures will tend to cause inconvenience, rather than affording any genuine protection.
A preferred solution is to limit the size of the images displayed, and to use visible watermarks. The combined effect of this is to reduce the commercial value of the images so that buyers do not get distracted from the intended purpose of the preview, their purchase. Additionally, images can be tagged with copyright information in their meta data, which is useful as a method for tracking the origins of images that have been removed without permission, or monitored proactively using tools such as PicScout. IMS will never let visitors copy a high-resolution original without authorisation. IMS also includes automated watermarking tools and meta data tagging to deter casual copyright abuse.
Child Protection
Child Protection is increasingly important to photographers who exhibit or sell images of children online. There are many legitimate businesses which need to do this, and they will understandably wish to ensure their images are sufficiently protected from unwanted attention.
The objective is to prevent unwanted viewing of the images in the first place. If we take a hypothetical villain who can see the preview or buy a print, there is already a problem. At this stage, there is no benefit in stopping them right-clicking to save a preview, for example. Child Protection is not the same as Copy Protection.
The solution to Child Protection is to use passwords, hence validating that the person viewing the images is who they say they are. Necessarily, it is also important to only give passwords to legitimate people. The process of giving our passwords is where the Child Protection begins, and IMS fully supports passwording images or collections of images as well as incorporating security features to prevent unauthorised access.