RE: Ideas on how to stop image theft (RE: After the recent site theft...)

by "Arcady"<arcady(at)jps.net>

 Date:  Thu, 6 Apr 2000 16:07:02 GMT
 To:  hwg-business(at)hwg.org,
hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
  todo: View Thread, Original
>I haven't tried this, but I heard that if you save the file as a
>non-repeating animated gif with the first frame different from the actual
>picture (saying this picture was stolen from....) then anyone opening it in

>a regular non-animation program will only see the first frame.  Set it to
>fast animation and no one should see it on your site.
>
>Not foolproof as someone who knows what they're doing can just open it in an

>animation program or do a screen capture, but slows them down.  Has anyone

>ever tried this?

I might try combining that with my Flash idea.

I've been thinking of having the flash file do something like display the image
in a looped series of 3 frames at a very high frame rate with one of them blank...
screen captures would hit the wrong frame 1/3 of the time. I'm trying to figure
out if there's a way I can time things so it all appears normal to human eyes
although to the computer it's a jumbled mess. Not sure if I can or not though...

I suspect this idea might end up making the image appear 30% transparent.

Apparently someone's just released a Flash cracker. And I'm wondering how much
legal responsibility he would face if a commercial site had an image or a Flash
animation stolen using his software... Currently you can only extract stuff
with his app if you register. Which means a lawyer with a supeona (sp?) could
get a list of all the crackers using his tool.

HTML: hwg-business mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA