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How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

patrick-wied.at

61–70 of 131 posts

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#61
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it's not interlacing faster than the eye can see, which is the whole problem. For this to work perfectly, your monitor refresh rate would need to be at least 2x higher than what your eyes can detect. And why would anyone build hardware with such a fast refresh rate? It's a cute idea, but in the end it ruins the image for normal uses just like the watermarks do.

Well, the website's down, so I can only speculate, but, how is the website to know the screen's refresh rate? If the site assumes, say, 60 Hz, but the rate is actually 72 Hz, you'll see an odd "fading" effect between the two interlace frames at a rate of 12 Hz, which is very noticeable. EDIT: Ah, I see he uses window.requestAnimationFrame [1] to sync with the frame rate, so this is not a problem. [1] https://develope…

It doesn't actually have to know. There's a JavaScript API called requestAnimationFrame which asks the browser to invoke a callback for the next display refresh. Invoke requestAnimationFrame again from that callback, and you'll get a steady stream of callbacks at the display refresh rate, or whatever the browser thinks it is.

Here's the relevant code from the demo:

         var work = (function() { 
           var toggle = false; 
           return function tester() { 
             frame1.style.opacity = toggle?.5:1; 
             frame2.style.opacity = toggle?1:.5; 
             toggle=!toggle; 
             requestAnimationFrame(tester); 
           }; 
         })(); 
         requestAnimationFrame(work);

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#62
post #20

Why would anyone want to do such stupid thing? It would prompt users to bypass it just because. And there are tons of ways to make a series of screenshots or even a video of the screen. Ksnapshot, imagemagick (import), ffmpeg, avconv etc. etc. > let’s assume things on the web should be protected… Let's assume DRM is a dumb and nasty idea which always leads to very crooked practices. Period. As if we don't have enough…

The evidence shows that DRM in the service of corporations and businesses tends to be nasty. But there are reasons to believe that DRM, if used to protect the data and privacy of individuals would be very valuable, with the caveat that it would have to be implemented in a trustworthy way. What if there was a way to provide access to your medical records to people who need them, only for as long as they need them? Wha…

> But there are reasons to believe that DRM, if used to protect the data and privacy of individuals would be very valuable, with the caveat that it would have to be implemented in a trustworthy way.

DRM can not be trustworthy by its mere definition (because trust is a mutual thing, and those who deploy DRM don't trust you - the user. So you have every reason not to trust them in return). And it never can be valuable since it's not only unethical and insulting towards users (since it uses presumption of guilt and police state ideas), but it's also completely ineffective and all it does is punishing paying customers, while the vast majority of actual pirates don't deal with it. DRM should just die out for good.

> What if there was a way to provide access to your medical records to people who need them, only for as long as they need them?

Authentication and information security has nothing to do with DRM, even though both can have features like encryption. Let's not mix unrelated subjects.

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#63

So here's a startup idea that can help with that. 1) Build a library for hiding encrypted information inside images. It should be hard to detect (indistinguishable from random) and robust (e.g. survive printing and scanning). 2) Build a web crawler, coupled with a key store. Crawl the internet for images that contain our encrypted info. 3) The copyright owners will be our paying clients. They will display images only…

It seems to me that you've basically described Digimarc®'s business model.

Hah! Yes, you're right.

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#64
post #12

How to drive away customers: prioritize your unproven loss of income over making an attractive product. Accuse all your users of copyright infringement.

I really dislike this attitude on HN. You can have great products that make no money because cracks get popular (I have done testing with my own software and know for sure this is the case) and get higher results than the original product listing on google, Adblock, and many other methods thought to be "rights". Even look at music piracy. Pirates did the big labels a favor: small, independent artists can't make a liv…

This is not my experience. I work in a space that is seeing impressive numbers from up and coming acts. To me it seems like the variety and quality of music offered to the consumer has increased leading to more people seeing Joe Blow's act instead of going to Cher or Britney Spears.

All the money is in touring and merchandising.

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#65
post #20

Why would anyone want to do such stupid thing? It would prompt users to bypass it just because. And there are tons of ways to make a series of screenshots or even a video of the screen. Ksnapshot, imagemagick (import), ffmpeg, avconv etc. etc. > let’s assume things on the web should be protected… Let's assume DRM is a dumb and nasty idea which always leads to very crooked practices. Period. As if we don't have enough…

The evidence shows that DRM in the service of corporations and businesses tends to be nasty. But there are reasons to believe that DRM, if used to protect the data and privacy of individuals would be very valuable, with the caveat that it would have to be implemented in a trustworthy way. What if there was a way to provide access to your medical records to people who need them, only for as long as they need them? Wha…

That's the same pie-in-the-sky "what if" that loser corps have been pursuing forever. Whatever scheme they come up with, someone else breaks it shortly thereafter, whether it's DiVX, or DVD encryption, or BluRay encryption, or any of that silly bs.

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#68

TL;DR You can't, stop trying. It's not worth the effort, it's tilting at windmills, and it pisses your users off. Just stop.

I am glad that this guy tried. I found some of the techniques pretty clever and I enjoyed reading the article. I do not believe you can stop people from taking screenshots and stealing images but I never considered some of the techniques the author explained. He was much closer to solving this than I expected.

Instead of that, the author could just talk about why interlacing was used in video in the past. No need to bring any DRM context in the discussion. The tone of the article is what's offending, not the technical details.

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#69
post #12

How to drive away customers: prioritize your unproven loss of income over making an attractive product. Accuse all your users of copyright infringement.

I really dislike this attitude on HN. You can have great products that make no money because cracks get popular (I have done testing with my own software and know for sure this is the case) and get higher results than the original product listing on google, Adblock, and many other methods thought to be "rights". Even look at music piracy. Pirates did the big labels a favor: small, independent artists can't make a liv…

> Pirates did the big labels a favor: small, independent artists can't make a living anymore because everyone just expects it to now be free.

This is a point I hear often, but there seems to be no consensus. If I understand you correctly, are you saying that small, independent artists used to make a living just from CD sales?

I've only met in person poor musicians, those that make money either from street concerts or the occasional gig, which were consistent with Courtney Love's position[1] that CD sales are not really important when it comes to revenue. But I'd love to hear an argument from the other side.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

Re: How to prevent screenshots in a web browser

#70
Anyone else try it?

I was curious and tried his live demo URL. and I used OS X's built in screen capture while using Chrome. The screen capture worked, no special tricks needed. I didn't see any visual degradation between my screen shot and the original.

The long and short of it is his DRM did not work.

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