What it's all about...
No image on the Web is safe.
Anyone can copy them and do what they like with them, normally against the artist's wishes. In the worst case, printouts of artwork taken directly from the Web have been known to be offered for sale on Internet sites - blatant theft!

But can you steal this image of Mel Gibson???
© 2001 David P.Encill

Cerberus is a two-part Java applet; one part is used for encrypting the image, the other part resides on the server and allows anyone accessing your site to view your images, but prevents them from "right-clicking" and saving the image to their hard disk. The image can still be viewed "offline" as the encrypted image and applet still reside in the browser's cache.

But Cerebus can handle more than just images! Any binary file can be encoded in exactly the same manner, so providing protection

Why the name "Cerberus"?
Cerberus was actually a three-headed dog that protected one of the gateways to Hell in Dante's Inferno. The ultimate guard dog if you prefer!

Why do you need protection?
There are three main reasons
The first is where your images are being used without permission on another site. Not a problem? Are they crediting you correctly as the copyright holder???

The second reason is less obvious, and you might not even be aware of the problem, but people could be using your images by using an absolute link to your site. This can cause absolute havoc with your site counter or statistics program by giving totally false results and giving you the impression that hundreds are visiting your site, where in reality it could be very few indeed....

Thirdly, a more serious case has been bought to our attention. This is where the artist had some high-grade images taken from a Web site and these were being SOLD as a print on eBay and Yahoo! Believe it or not, this pirate was commended by "customers" on his good service!!!

The message is clear - do not place high-grade, low compression images on your site! Not only do they take an age to load, it's making it sooo easy for the thief...

What it can't do
Images can still be copied, of course, by copying the entire browser window (or the entire screen) into the computer's clipboard, and then cropped and edited using an image editing program. However, this means the user is saving an already JPEG encoded image, which then requires further JPEG encoding to make it Web compatible. JPEG is a "lossy" format, meaning the image quality degrades each time it's saved. But the user can save it with zero JPEG compression, can't they? Yes, but then it becomes impractical for use on the Web as the filesize and therefore downloads become severe and people will just go elsewhere.

We appreciate that Cerberus is not totally foolproof (nothing can entirely protect Web images), but it places enough problems in the way of any pirate to make it impractical for them to use it commercially or illegally - and let's face it, most pirates are stupid people who have got nothing better to do.

What's the catch?
None really - except nothing in life is free! Because we need to make Cerberus an easy "one-shot" conversion utility where the image files are encrypted automatically, and all relevent changes are made to the HTML files, this does become rather costly. In addition, if each applet is administered personally (increasing the protection procedure) this all becomes very time-consuming.

However, because we wish to see Cerberus adopted as a Web security tool, we have decided to make the charge minimal - in all probablity no more than 5 to 10 UK pounds (around $7.50 to $15.00).

Express your interest!
With your support Cerberus can be improved for this proposed version. If you want to be kept informed of future developments, send us your e-mail address. We do not pass these details onto any company or organisation for marketing purposes - be assured - and we only send information specific to Cerberus!

Lan View, Bunker Street, Freckleton
Lancashire PR4 1HA. England

Tel (Sales): +44 (0)121-693 6669
sales@sabretech.co.uk
tech@sabretech.co.uk