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Clever Content keeps your images safe By Rebecca Rohan , ZDNet Business & Technology 24/04/01 Now they see it--but they can't steal it. Your visitors can have the run of your Web site, but they can't download your images, e-mail them to their friends, or capture a screen. If they try, they'll get a page tiled with blue and white swirls where the images would be. Those swirls are the hallmark of Alchemedia Technologies Inc.'s Clever Content--a server/manager/viewer triad that keeps your intellectual property under your control. Clever Content is a worthy tool for sites that need to protect content from theft, even at the expense of giving the world seamless first-time access to their content. We were impressed with Clever Content's ability to withstand our attempts to snatch content from its jaws. The pictures were visible but not grab-able. They didn't even exist in the Windows Explorer or Netscape cache while we were at the site. How does it work? Clever Content detects whether there's a protected image on a page. If there is, it passes the browser a version of the page with JavaScript at the top that checks whether the user has the Clever Content plug-in, and directs him to download one when appropriate. Plug-in viewers are available for Windows and Macintosh, but not Linux, clients. Clever Content replaces the file name with an encrypted string. If the user doesn't have the plug-in, the browser displays a swirly image as a placeholder. If he does have the plug-in, he's allowed access to the image through means Alchemedia won't reveal. Whatever the means, protected images take a bit more time to display than unprotected images, but not long enough to deter those with a need to protect their intellectual assets. Right-clicking
a protected image, rather than giving the user a context-sensitive
menu that includes a choice to save the image, instead brings up
three messages and URLs related to Clever Content, which you can
replace with your own text and links. If visitors use a third-party
program or Alt-PrintScreen to take a screen shot, the resulting
picture may even include a message asking them to close a specific
screen capture program. When we tried a capture with TechSmith's
SnagIt, for example, Clever Content asked us to "Please close
snagit32.exe" Managing
Assets Clever Content Manager offers three basic ways to protect your assets. The easiest is to highlight the file name of a static image and click the Protect and Submit buttons. You can also protect static images by surrounding any section of the page with <!PROTECT> and <!/PROTECT> tags, then highlighting the desired page and clicking the Tags and Submit buttons. (If you've reserved <!PROTECT> and <!/PROTECT> tags for use in an XML schema, you can specify different start and end tags for Clever Content.) Finally, you can protect dynamic content--whether ASP-generated or presented by Server Side Includes--by adding pages, images, directories, or programs that generate content to a list, choosing an option such as Protect All Content That This Generates, and clicking Submit. You could also place <!PROTECT> and <!/PROTECT> tags around areas on page where dynamic content will appear. Currently, Clever Content protects only GIF, JPEG, and text files. You can visit an example of protected dynamic text at Fox's X-Men site. Click "Skip" to get past the Flash introduction. Choose "The Story," and then "Script." The dynamically generated text appears with Clever Content protection. We were able to highlight the text and choose "Copy" using Structu Rise's Kleptomania, but could paste only the blue and white swirl--no words. The Clever Content Server runs on Windows NT 4.0 or 2000 servers running IIS 4.0 or Sun Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, or 2.7 boxes running Netscape Enterprise Server 3.5.1 or 3.6 or Apache 1.3.6. It ran smoothly for us. Until recently, Alchemedia required all customers installing the server to do so with a support person on the phone, if not a representative at the customer's site. Installation isn't difficult enough to require technical handholding, so now the company offers a 10-day trial server that customers can install themselves. It's also offering the software to third parties who will make hosted sites available. If you have a need to raise the veil on the company's assets without letting customers fondle them, take Alchemedia up on that 10-day trial.
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