Previous Story
Deterring Bandwidth Theft
Posted On 06 Dec 2000
Many porn developers lose a tremendous amount of money because of bandwidth theft. This type of stealing occurs when unscrupulous webmasters link to graphic images on your site without permission.Many porn developers lose a tremendous amount of money because of bandwidth theft. This type of stealing occurs when unscrupulous webmasters link to graphic images on your site without permission.
Because the Internet is designed as a multi-faceted, multi-accessible medium, images can be rendered on an individual Web site from a multiplicity of locations. Unscrupulous webmasters thus exploit the inherently anarchic nature of the Web so that they don’t have to pay the costs associated with a high-traffic sex site.
They use HTML code to call-up your images from your server so that they appear on their own Web site. This allows them to avoid the costs of buying or producing pictures and paying for expensive Web hosting bills.
Since your server is providing the images for both your site and that of the thief, you are the one left to flip the entire Web hosting bill. This situation allows the thief to profit by essentially selling access to your pictures on his site, without paying you royalties or for bandwidth incurred. In the most brazen of cases, the thief will even sign up for your reseller program and will save money by linking to your images and banners, while at the same time receiving a commission from you.
“…you should implement software that integrates with your Web server to protect your property.”
Such situations can only be considered intolerable since you pay the full burden for bandwidth and for producing fresh content. To avoid these unfair and unnecessary costs, you should implement software that integrates with your Web server to protect your intellectual property.
Software Solutions
A good software package that protects your images is Secure Image Pro from Artistscope. The software provides protection from right mouse click and from Microsoft Explorer page saving. The program even goes as far as encrypting images in your user’s cache, so that your users cannot retrieve images stored in temporary folders. The software also bars printing the images, labels images, and locks the display of your images to designated Web sites. Secure Image will basically protect your images from all avenues of downloading and saving except for screen capture, where a snap of the screen is taken. Most screen captures will be low-resolution, so Secure Image will prevent the wholesale theft of your high-quality pics.
Another protection software package that you might consider is Copysight from Intellectual Protocols, LLC. The package consists of a set of Java applets that provide both warnings and copy protection. The first level of protection is the form of a warning. When the end user puts their mouse over your text or graphics, a copyright notice appears in the status line of their browser. If they click on the object to either “cut and paste” text or to download the graphic, they get a second “explicit popup window” with a copyright notice. The final level of protection is simply the inability to download any material from your Web site. This is because the Java applets act to disable all normal browser “copying” functionality.
These programs come highly recommended because they are loaded with features to protect your graphics, but you can also protect them at the server level if your host your sites on the UNIX platform. Instructions on how to achieve this are available from A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned.
