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Kudasz considered many of the commercial solutions on the market, but eventually chose to develop something in-house. "Primarily, we did our own solution because we have more programming talent than money. Most of the large commercial products we looked at are licensed on a per unit (per image) basis and there's no way we can go with that. Others require third-party plug-ins which may be an ultimate protection method but introduces compatibility issues for our visitors and costs for us. We wanted it to be transparent for the visitors. Finally, the anti-hijack and anti-spider code and logging didn't seem to be in the same packages that rely only on image protection."

Nick Gleis is a professional photographer who offers on-demand large format prints through several online ecommerce sites, including LtdEditionPrints.com. "We found it necessary to install a commercial protection system because we found copies of our images on another site, without our permission and the site holder was actually upset when we sent a cease and desist. We went in search of a system that would inform and/or prevent an average Internet user from downloading and using our material. We selected the Neotrope system because it was an easy, quick, and affordable solution for protecting the hundreds of copyrighted images we show online."

"We were very pleased," he added, "that within one week of installing the system, we received a complaint e-mail from a site visitor that they were unable to copy an image from our site. Some people think it is okay to use any image on the Web, while others think it's okay as long as it is only for personal use. Both are incorrect."

Assuming you have or are your own Webmaster you certainly have many options. However, if you're new to protecting your content, the various steps in encrypting your images, or managing who has access to them can be daunting at first.

"For the beginner or home page user we have a free 'lite' version of our Secure Image product, which will encrypt images and display them on Web pages," says ArtistScope's Kent. "The free version incorporates all of the full version's features except batch import and processing. The user can register online for a free code to use with the program that will lock the images to their specific Web site. The encrypted images cannot be viewed offline or away from the user's site. The basic Secure Image product will protect the images from all avenues of copying and saving, except screen capture."

Options for Protection

Alchemedia offers a product called Clever Content which, up until this year, was available for individuals but is now a higher end product geared toward enterprise businesses. The system provides for management, encryption and delivery of text, images (except animated and transparent GIFs), and PDFs via a Web server application and a browser-based plug-in (like QuickTime or Flash). Clever Content is designed to help corporations protect proprietary information from employee theft, and allow preview of content and technology to third parties. The system is powerful because in addition to deactivation of right-mouse-click saving, and menu choice saving, it prevents caching and even screen capture. And, the plug-in works with all browsers. Large companies like AC Neilsen Online, Ralston Foods, and Twentieth Century Fox use solutions from Alchemedia to protect their intellectual property.

ArtistScope was one of the first companies to offer an online image protection system and offers several solutions. Their cross-platform product is called Secure Image Pro and it protects images from all copying methods and bandwidth theft (linking directly to images on your Web server), except screen capture. This system uses encryption to modify the image type so it can only be served and read by their software.

The Secure Image Pro suite has batch-conversion capability to speed implentation, and requires installation of a Web server-side script. A Java Applet is used in the Web browser to control saving, plus offers special features like mouse-overs, messages in the browser window, and other options.

"Our programs are both server- and client-based and will run from any Web site on any Web server," says ArtistScope's Kent. The product is also effective at blocking capture of content through Microsoft's 'save site' function, and the browser cache. For complete novices, or those who don't have the ability to manage scripts and content, ArtistScope offers their CopySafe solution which is a hosted product which you manage through your browser, and which is controlled via the publisher's remotely hosted software. This subscription-based product is simple to use, affordable, and very effective.

"CopySafe is the top of our range," says Kent. "It incorporates all the features and functions of the Secure Image series and with the use of our special plug-in, users (site visitors) are not able to copy, print or capture the image in any way. CopySafe will not only protect images, but used wisely, it will protect any content on a Web page." There are no MacOS browser Plug-ins currently available for CopySafe, however.

Digimarc primarily offers watermarking solutions which embed copyright data into the image via a Photoshop-compatible utility. It's inexpensive but provides no protection against copying images or bandwidth theft. One innovative offering is MarcSpider which searches for the presence of Digimarc's ImageBridge watermarks in up to 50 million Web images a month, and can report on unauthorized sites using your watermarked image without permission. Corbis.com uses Digimarc watermarking and image tracking, along with other proprietary copy-protection schemes to serve image previews online. According to Digimarc's Larry Trevarthen, "Digimarc is the market leader in watermarking both in the U.S. and internationally. We have over a hundred thousand customers with billions of objects watermarked."