Anti-piracy: moving watermarks and kiosk protection

Server-side watermarking for the public web gallery plus a moving, brightness-pulsing overlay on kiosk screens defeats phone-camera capture.

Two layers of protection

### Web gallery (before payment)

Every unpurchased photo is rendered through Cloudinary with a translucent center watermark at 40 percent opacity, compressed to WebP at 60 percent quality. CSS or HTML watermarks are forbidden in the platform — they're trivially stripped. Server-side only.

### Kiosk screen (inside the venue)

The kiosk POS and self-service screens render a full-screen moving watermark overlay that:

Continuously translates across the display (about one loop every 12 to 16 seconds).
Pulses brightness between 70 percent and 160 percent every 1.7 seconds.

The motion breaks a steady phone-camera capture. The brightness pulsing interferes with the phone camera's auto-exposure so the resulting photo is streaky and unusable.

Customizing the watermark

Each kiosk page picks its own overlay via the `MovingWatermark` component props:

- text — the phrase shown, default `FOTIQO • PROOF • DO NOT COPY`. - opacity — 0 to 1, default 0.35. Lower on the TV display (0.15) so attract-mode photos still look great. - size — px, default 48. - speed — seconds per loop, default 12.

Admin controls

Go to Admin > Anti-piracy to configure the watermark string per venue, review attempted screen-captures flagged by the kiosk, and toggle the overlay on or off per screen.

FAQ

Q: Won't a moving watermark distract paying customers?

Slightly, yes. That's the point — the kiosk is for browsing; the final paid photos are delivered unwatermarked to the guest's phone and email.

Q: Can I disable the watermark for a specific event?

Yes, temporarily via the admin panel, but it's strongly discouraged — piracy attempts spike in that window.