ImageSafe 2.81

ImageSafe 2.81 is designed as a helpful and easy to use application which allows to create images to see but not in a form that can be easily copied. To do this the product encapsulates webpage images in a Java applet for viewing.

What about screen capture? Screen capture by a user can be done in a second and its not possible to prevent the saving of whats on the screen despite attempts to disable key sequences. The best way to frustrate screen capture is to animate the image in some way. Just encoding the image in an applet is little deterrent on its own although animated GIFs are the exception since they are already moving. If you are just interested in having a static watermark over your image then use H2Omarker.

To get maximum protection from ImageSafe it's recommended that the following options be employed:

• The "originating server prefix" should be specified so that applets wont run locally
• Moving text or a moving second image should overlay the main image to frustrate screen capture.

ImageSafe and HTML editors: A lot of page authoring is now done with HTML editors like Frontpage. Some users may find it tricky to cut and paste the HTML of an ImageSafe applet so ImageSafe provides the option for the correct HTML to be put directly into the system clipboard. Once there, clicking the Windows right mouse button and doing a paste operation can move the HTML directly into the HTML editors "insert HTML" dialog.

ImageSafe and watermarking: There is no problem using a watermark such as Photoshops Digimark or H2Omarker and ImageSafe together. This can provide an additional level of digital rights management (DRM). The image that goes into ImageSafe is the image that comes out. For more on watermarking and its problems go to Fabian Petitcolass watermarking page at Cambridge Uni.

A note about browser caches: If you protect an image with ImageSafe and run the same image through ImageSafe again, perhaps because you registered the product or changed an option, you may get a "Null pointer exception" message when you look at the new applet on your local PC. The reason is that the browser is retrieving the old applet out of the cache so the cache should be cleared to fix the problem.

ImageSafe weaknesses: ImageSafe is NOT a panacea for copy protection. The product can however, make it extremely difficult to get hold of a clean copy of an image. It should be noted that if a moving overlay image is used with Imagesafe and the image is too small it may be that screen captures could be made at different times and the screen shots lined up in an image editing program and the overlay image edited out. If a line of moving text is used (particularly one with no spaces) then it becomes virtually impossible to remove this no matter how many screen captures are made.

The other weakness concerns download times. Clearly there is a small extra amount of data to download with the image however perceived download time can be higher because all the data has to download for the image to appear. In the case of Netscape all the ImageSafe applets on a single page have to download completely before any will appear. This means it is not appropriate to have many images on a single page unless you know your site visitors have a fast connection.