Patent ID: 6704797
Filing Date: 2004-03-09
Classification: G06F,H04N

Abstract:
A method for restricting access to an image served by an image server, comprising the steps of:establishing a distribution policy that defines at least one rule including criteria for permitted distribution of the image, wherein the distribution policy is established for an access manager associated with the image server; generating an altered version of the image; responsive to receipt of a request from a client for the image, parsing the request to identify client-specific data; comparing the client-specific data against the criteria in the rule and determining whether the request originates from a given referring location wherein the given referring location is a given domain, wherein the comparing and determining steps are performed by the access manager; serving a given version of the image as a result of the comparison and determination, when the request originates from the given referring location, wherein the serving step is performed by the image server; serving the altered version of the image as a result of the comparison and determination, when the request does not originate from the given referring location, wherein the serving step is performed by the image server.