stolen pics

[cecilvw]

this topic is simple.

My wife is a professional photog and she was just informed that her work was stolen by a customer who after being given the CD to view the daughters senior high school portraits (CD is set to expire in 6 days) this is standard practice for the business. all copyright functions on the exe program were set to eliminate the possibility of theft.

however the customer was able to open the exe program on the CD and was then able to completely download all copyrighted portraits off the CD and essentially steal them from my wife.

this is a serious matter and we would appreciate all your inputs on how to stop this ability to open the exe program before this knowledge gets out of hand and the business is severely affected by this theft.

[evan]

Always resize your pictures, don't just put the full res camera image in the slideshow. That's just asking for trouble.

It would be nice if some steps were taken to keep photos from being removed from the slideshow... would it be possible to PGP encrypt the images in the executable? I guess they'd still have to be decrypted into RAM...

[OGL]

Absolute protection does not exist.

Regards.

Oleg

[Guest guru]

quote:

"Absolute protection does not exist"

I agree, Oleg. It doesn't exist absolutely.

[jayspry]

They most likely just right-click the mouse button and saved the image to a file, while they viewed the pictures. This is a problem with the windows environment and not a failure of PTE. It has been talked about on many forums having to do with photographs and short of watermarking the images and using much lower resolution images, your will not prevent this. There are means to prevent right-clicking on the image, but there are more ways to get around that. Digital images are very easy to shanghi by someone who really wants them, no matter what you do. You have to trade off easy access to the customer (to make the sale) against a resonable solid effort to prevent it. Right now it is best use low resolution images (they will not make great prints) and a watermark. Their easy and will stop the largest percentage of people from stealing the images, but will not stop a motivated person.

jays

[OGL]

Yes, Guido. I think that this is moral problem.

[evan]

How'd they right click to save the image in Pics2Exe?

[marian]

This topic has been beat to death many times!

Virtually any screen capture program can grab images from the screen.

WATERMARK & COPYRIGHT the images! That's the only "safe" way!

[boxig]

Here is from the Readme file of "Secret Agent" utility:

"Secret Agent" is a program which does secret mission.

Like James bond, it has a license to kill, and it will kill

the "Print Screen" function while runing your show, and thus,

preventing the bad guys from stealing your precious pictures.

It is not undefeated, but also James Bond is not.

Anyway, it does most of what it is expected.

Download from my site and give it a try

Granot

[OGL]

boxig wrote:

"Secret Agent" is a program which does secret mission.  Like James bond, it has a license to kill, and it will kill...

Oh, oh...Utilites..."Secret Agent"!...Bond, James Bond... It's cool...

But...How we can kill James Bond?

Method #1

Connect " TV out " of videocard your computer with "Input" connector of

the video recorder. (quality of stolen picture is so-so, VHS HQ or Betacam

maximum)

Method #2

Make digital photo of your screen. (quality of stolen picture is good)

Method #3

Connect "R","G" and "B" outputs of videocard your computer with "Input"

connector of 3Cannel high speed A/D convertor card. (quality of stolen

picture is super, 1/1)

Method #4

Use "Anti Secret Agent" utilite.

Method #5, #6, #7...e.t.c

Dear Gantor, I repeat: this is moral problem.

Regards,

Oleg

[evan]

Just a thought...

Would it be possible for P2E to use hardware overlay, so that if you hit Print Screen all you got was a black box? If you don't know what I'm talking about, open up Windows Media Player and watch a movie, and try to Printscreen it. The video isn't put in until it gets to the video card. You'd lose some compatibility, but not too much I don't think. Combined with some kind of encryption so you couldn't use Resource Viewer to pull the images out of the executable, and you'd make it much harder to copy stuff.

[JRR]

Another way anyone can take copies of images off screen. See:

http://abone.turk.net/bulentb27/index.htm#...#screenrecorder

[nobeefstu]

Your right JRR,

The PTE Users here must understand thats theirs no way to STOP this image copy/hijacking of their works in the PTE Show. All the 3rd party tools etc ... may stop some inexperience pc users, slow down other users with some basic knowledge, but they wont ever stop it completely from the smart and sauvy user.

A word to : cecilvw

Even though you have set whatever protections you used to expire your executable ... it was still possible for your client to grab the images prior to your 6 day expiration date. And other Tools out there can get them later ... so you will never be totally safe.

[noel.photo]

Would it be possible to have P2E automatically apply a watermark to the images in the EXE/SCR as a disincentive to people doing screen captures, I've only just bought it, and it's a great product, but like the people above, I'm concerned about customers ripping my hard work off of the screen.

Obviously I could use PS to apply a watermark, or reduce the resolution of the image, but I feel a higher quality image looks better and sells the photos better, but I would prefer it if I could just have P2E add a "SAMPLE" or "COPYRIGHTED" banner across the centre of the presentation.

Thanks.

-Noel

[Bubba]

Concerning noel.photo's question about adding a "copyright" banner:

Yes you can add a "Copyrighted" banner or anything else on you slideshow pictures. First make a copy (ie. save as) in the original folder of one of the pictures but name it "copyrighted" or whatever. Now put it in the slideshow next to the same photo but use "fade" so they appear as one photo. Or just rename one of the photos to "Copyrighted". Select it in PTE(click/highlight) and at the top menu bar click on "Slide" then choose "Set Comments on all Slides=Current One." In "Project Options" you can change the font size and position in the "Comments" tab. I think you could use the "Customize Slide" option to change the font size and position too. To remove just go back to Project Options and click on "Clear all comments" button.

Concerning Evan's question about not allowing the user to use "Print Screen":

PTE has an option to disable a user's print screen option. It works great. Find it in Project Option, Advanced Tab, then just put a check mark in "Don't Allow Print Screen."

[Bubba]

I forgot to add this regarding adding a copyright banner:

In Project Options - "Comments" tab - Customize Comments - choose "Picture Name." This is what "set comments on all slides=current one" needs before it will work.

[nobeefstu]

Bubba,

Do not fall victim to a false sense of copy protection :

PTE has an option to disable a user's print screen option. It works great. Find it in Project Option, Advanced Tab, then just put a check mark in "Don't Allow Print Screen.

Many tools can overide this protection of PTE ...even my own ScreenPrints utility does ( it uses the prints screen key too and not some other hot key)