YNOT – A Brazilian software developer has introduced a new server-side digital rights management system that employs steganography to do more than track escaped copyrighted material — it also tracks the pirates and provides an evidence trail.

Offered as a website plug-in, Chroma Shift automatically embeds a user ID or other content-owner-defined identifying mark into each downloaded image. Unlike a watermark, the steganographic marks are virtually imperceptible to the naked eye.

“While Chroma Shift doesn’t stop theft, it will let you know who is leaking your content so you can immediately terminate their user account and slow the bleeding,” Chief Executive Officer Alexander Fotios said. “You have the user ID of the member who leaked the content to file-sharing sites or BitTorrent [sites] embedded in the actual photo or other graphic that they downloaded from your site.

“From there it’s a simple matter of matching the user ID to your membership logs, terminating their account and logging their copyright infringements for potential prosecution,” he continued. “The best part is that the embedded information will persist in the JPEG image even if it is scaled, cropped, Photoshop filtered, recompressed or otherwise manipulated. You can’t get rid of [the mark] unless you degrade image quality to the point that it loses most of its value.”

SexyFur.com and TailHeat.com have embraced Chroma Shift’s PHP plug-in as their DRM system for membership websites, allowing their furry niche anime artists an extra layer of protection in managing their copyrighted images.

“We had to find a solution in which the embedded data would remain intact to the point the image was undesirable or destroyed if a pirate tried to alter it, and that’s where Chroma Shift came in,” said Jeremy Bernal, founder of Sexy Fur and Tail Heat. “Not only does it help us stop piracy, but it’s also cost-effective.

“Filing copyright lawsuits is expensive; even sending out registered cease-and-desist letters is expensive,” he added. “But cutting off the pirate’s access and keeping the evidence on hand should litigation become necessary is very cost-effective in the long run.”

The Chroma Shift steganographic module was developed in C for the Linux platform. The software compiles into a PHP loadable module. A website’s internal PHP scripts access the module with all the usual speed of a natively compiled program. This allows for embedded information to be created dynamically, directly through the website. Webmasters also may choose to embed a traditional watermark as images pass through the Chroma Shift plug-in, making the system even more customizable for the content owner.

For now, the plug-in supports only still images, but a video version is under development.

More information and a demonstration are available at Chroma-Shift.com.