Patent ID: 6850911

Claim:
A secure manipulation archiving retrieval and transmission system for electronic multi media commerce, comprising: a) a plurality of client devices having image communication capability; b) an image processing center, including an application server(s), and an image archiving and storage database containing multimedia files, associated meta data, and image-rendering scripts for processing images to create variations of high resolutions images wherein the image rendering scripts are stored in lieu of non high-resolution images; c) a host server connected to client devices by a communication network, and to the image processing center through an electronic security mechanism, the host server providing the client devices indirect access to the image processing center through the electronic security mechanism, whereby the client devices are prevented from interacting directly with the image processing center to provide multiple levels of security to the image processing center; d) a commercial photo network including a plurality of image capture devices and image output devices connected by a communication network; e) an image clearinghouse connected to the commercial photo network for temporarily receiving, storing and distributing images based on a set of rules for storage, and distribution of the images, and connected to the image processing center through an electronic security mechanism, wherein the image clearinghouse can distribute a digital image to other servers that are not a part of the system, and wherein the image clearinghouse includes means for distributing digital images according to a distribution policy based upon image resolution, whereby the commercial photo network is prevented from interacting directly with the image processing center to provide multiple levels of security to the image processing center; and f) a plurality of third party on-line image storage and retrieval sites connected to the image clearinghouse by a communication network.