Protecting images?
 

We have many html and pdf pages that we need to protect on our site.
It is one of the reasons we have a paying membership. And we want to make sure that all our time into these images (diagrams, schematics, etc.) is not wasted by someone just copying them off.

How to best do this?
Right now we are putting a clear gif image over the top of each one. But this is limited.
I was thinking that we could load all the images into the database, then we can control how they are seen on a user level basis.

We accept the fact that paying members will most likely download the images to store on their computer. But we would like to keep that from happening if possible (or offer it as an extra service).

Are there any plugins that can manage this?
I took a quick look at the files download manager, but I am not sure this will solve my issue.

When we used Postnuke before, we just used the PostWrap plugin, and it did a real good job of hiding where the directory was. Plus a few other tricks, and we were ok with that.

It just seems that VB is powerful enough to offer a GOOD way to protect images/files, and have good management over them. Meaning, we have show them as images within an HTML page, but still have complete control over who can see them and download them.

not an easy task.. but have you thought of watermarking them?..

We have thought about that as well. But it doesn't keep lower level users from viewing them.
Someone could find the url for the image, and post for anyone else to see. We don't want that.

ok.. what about htaccess just for members..

how far do you want to go to block them... you could script out the right-click feature and go as far as disabling the users keyboard on a page so that there's no input (highlight - Copy/Paste will no longer work either); but that hurts on forums where you need users to posts... cause they won't be able to without a lot of popups.

Okay, if you want to stop them viewing and downloading the files before they pay, that is possible. It may also be possible to stop the wrong use of whatever in the PDF files. However, images on webpages cannot be protected whatsoever as far as I can remember, since any form of scripting can be beaten by disabling Javascript or methods built into certain web browsers, and in Firefox, a lot of image hiding and such with backgrounds can be defeated by choosing to view background image, copy image location etc. Frankly, I need to know exactly what you are planning to do with these files. If it's to stop them being downloaded by non registered users, that's extremely easy. if you honestly try to stop the paying users downloading them off the site and distributing, the sad fact is that there is no 100% way and such like. Basically, from what I know, if a person can view a file, they can also download it.