The founder of copy protection for the Internet
What is now the ArtistScope company originally started in
1997 as an art department to develop web resources for the
promotion of fine artists. However it soon became apparent
that known artists would not risk their livelihood by
exhibiting without some form of copy control. But finding a
workable solution was an ominous task because despite
extensive research and the inquisition of leading developers
from all parts of the world, the common response was “that
it was not possible” and “who would bother?”.
So the ArtistScope company was founded for the research and
development of a solution for the protection of the artist’s
livelihood, and in 1998 the first software for the copy
protection of images was released to the public. Secure
Image used image encryption to prevent image copy by mouse
save and retrieval from cache, and by employing “domain
lock” (another ArtistScope innovation) the images stored on
a web server were safe from web masters and company staff.
But those images did not remain secure for long, because
while Printscreen was virtually unknown, and screen capture
software not yet available, the whistle blowers made sure
that everyone knew how to take a screen shot, and soon after
we saw a wave of screen capture software being released as
aids to copy, pirate and plagiarize anything displayed on a
computer desktop.
And such is the way with copy protection where you have a
minority group, in this case artists and authors who work to
create and entertain, and a majority group hell bent on
selfishly exploiting art and entertainment without any
consideration given to the livelihood of its providers or
the continuance of supply.
It took another year for ArtistScope to create a counter
solution, and in 1999 “CopySafe” was released incorporating
the same image encryption but with added protection provided
by a browser plugin to control the clipboard and browser
cache. Since its release CopySafe technology has had to
adapt to many radical changes in both Windows and web
browser environments, to survive and evolve into a Windows
process for reliable and robust copy protection.
The first CopySafe release, now known as “CopySafe Web”,
provides secure protection from all methods of copy and
save, including Printscreen and screen capture, something
that no other solution can do. CopySafe Web can be applied
to absolutely any web page on any web site.
CopySafe Web is for the protection of online content that is
viewed using a web browser. To protect content viewed
offline, like with documents that can be downloaded or sent
by emailed for local viewing, ArtistScope chose the commonly
used PDF file format for their new document protection
solution known as “CopySafe PDF”.
Almost any type of file can be converted to PDF, which in
turn can be encrypted for display in the CopySafe PDF
Reader, which not only provides copy protection for the
contents of open documents, but also prevents their
unauthorized distribution.
Preventing file copy, which is the duplication of a file, is
not possible… but it is possible to thwart their
unauthorized distribution by limiting who has access to open
and view their contents by employing “Digital Rights
Management” which is more commonly referred to as “DRM”. But
when the ArtistScope team looked at the contemporary methods
available for DRM, it was realized that a more secure and
more robust solution was needed to ensure that document
control remained in the hands of the author.
Consequently ArtistScope developed new techniques for DRM to
provide authors with total control over who has access to
their documents, when and how, and also enable document
properties to be changed at any time with immediate effect,
even over documents already downloaded to the user’s
computer. Using ArtistScope DRM, authors can now deliver
eBooks and documents that are restricted to use by select
people or a groups of people while others cannot open them.
Over the years ArtistScope has innovated many solutions for
protecting links to media, web page encryption and secure
video players, but it was realized that the best overall
solution would be to do what ArtistScope should have done in
the beginning… create their own web browser, one specially
designed to protect content rather than expose it like the
other web browsers do.
The ArtistScope Site Protection System (ASPS) is the
ultimate in web site protection because it uses such a web
browser to decrypt and display web content delivered in
encrypted form. The ASPS web reader is the only browser
capable of decoding and displaying ASPS protected web pages,
providing most secure copy protection environment ever
imagined for all types of web content including html,
images, Flash, PDF and video. In fact ASPS is the only
solution that can effectively copy protect ALL media and it
does so without requiring any special treatment such as
encryption of the media.
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