FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ARTISTSCOPE, THE LEADING INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (DRM) COMPANY, SELECTS NEOTROPE, AN INNOVATIVE PR AND MEDIA RELATIONS FIRM, TO PROMOTE BRAND AND LINE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT TOOLS IN NORTH AMERICA

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (PRnetwire) -- August 20, 2001 -- Artistscope, the premier international digital rights management (DRM) solutions provider, today announced it has selected Neotrope (www.neotrope.com) to provide public relations and e-marketing for a broad range of DRM solutions aimed at protecting intellectual property from theft online.

Artistscope selected Neotrope because of their suite of innovative public relations and business promotion services, and their history of representing the technology sector. Neotrope is a marketing, brand development, and public relations company founded in 1983, and is a member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Specializing in the technology sector, Neotrope has previously represented VARs, memory companies, PC manufacturers, and software developers.

"Neotrope has amply demonstrated a working and expert knowledge of our market niche, and our target customer," said William Kent, president and founder of Artistscope. "We are highly confident they will be successful in improving and expanding both our brand awareness and product penetration in North America."

"Digital rights management is on the verge of coming into its own and bypassing the hype and quasi-pyramid-scheme groping for investor monies of the near past. The companies who are still on the map are those, like us, who are committed to the concept for the right reasons: we use what we develop on our own sites, and for our own clients. We know the technology, we know the customer, and we know the audience. Our systems work, and are affordable; and we stay apace with those who seek ways to get around DRM solutions."

"I think this is an exciting opportunity for us to make the Artistscope solutions really well known to the content management community," said Christopher Simmons, President and founder of Neotrope. "The number one concern for artists and photographers, and really any company who wants to control use of their materials, is inarguably the management of 'who does what' with that content once it's made available."

"For any size business, choosing and controlling who can view, print, and/or copy materials is vital to any organization which may show pre-release or development content. It's not unusual for materials to 'float' to a competitor, even when the person or company allowed to view content has signed a NDA. With Artistscope's CopySafe solution, all kinds of companies including the smallest, have a viable and affordable solution for keeping their proprietary information safe, while at the same time allowing certain authorized team members or potential clients to have limited access over the Internet."

"We're proud to have been selected to provide Artistscope's PR and marketing services, and with DRM becoming more and more important, we feel it will be a pretty exciting project -- because it's a pretty exciting technology, and a valuable 'story that should be told.' It's really time for a lot of the corporate folks out there to wake up and realize that theft of content is easier than ever, and the tools to copy content without permission greatly exceed those to protect it by a factor of one hundred to one. Solutions like those from Artistscope will become not only an important consideration on the DRM map, but a necessity for anyone who wants to remain in business and stay competitive in the new 'wired economy' of the 21st century."

In addition to professional public relations services, Neotrope offers "budget" PR services through an online site called Send2Press (www.Send2Press.com). Through Send2Press, small business and "start-ups" who can't afford traditional public relations are provided the talents of professional writers and editors for press release writing and dissemination at a fraction of PR industry rates.

ARTISTSCOPE'S DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS FOR INTERNET-BASED DELIVERY OF VISUAL CONTENT INCLUDE:

Secure Image and Secure Image Pro --

Secure Image is an affordable cross-platform solution for protecting images from the most common methods of content theft: mouse-click saving, and linking directly to and/or copying directly from the image URL found in the HTML. Secure Image is available for both MacOS and Windows platforms.

As well as the primary features such as prevention of direct saving, etc., each registered site has a unique key so that the image may only be seen from the protected site. The images cannot be viewed from anywhere else and are safe on your server. They are not obtainable by direct or indirect means... only by viewing the image from your page and from within the applet viewer. Spiders, "grab applications" and programs such as Xenu and Teleport Pro (that search a site and provide a report of all the linked content) cannot locate the Java and data files associated with the protected images.

Secure Image will enable a preview of your images in a window for selection, allow manipulation of size, screen messages, borders and display style, and then save the whole batch with a single click of a button, making it ideal for galleries and large product catalogues. Secure Image will encrypt thousands of images with just one click. With the multi-register feature the image can be locked to either a single domain or used on all your sites in the registry list. The image cannot be viewed online unless from your own -- or an authorized -- web site.

Screen shot of Secure Image Pro: http://www.artistscope.net/secure_image/ref/converter500-mac.gif

CopySafe and CopySafe PBV --

CopySafe is the universal solution for all artists, photographers, studios, galleries, and corporations on the web to employ in protecting their content.

CopySafe will protect images and other page content, making them safe from all avenues of saving, printing and capture. By using CopySafe, content creators, artists and web builders can be assured that their online images are safe from all avenues of saving, printing and capture. CopySafe users can be sure their online presentations and e-commerce transactions involving images registered with the software are secure and protected from any unauthorized activity.

CopySafe provides security against all avenues of saving, printing and screen capture -- which are the inherent weaknesses found in the majority of DRM solutions for protecting online content. It is the most portable image protection solution available on the web and will run from any web page or folder. Content can be delivered from any normal web page on any type of web server. Or it can be delivered on the fly using cgi, SQL, etc. With custom editing, CopySafe can enable you to protect all of your page content including text and other material such as Flash movies and Pdf files.

Screen shot of browser-based image upload system in CopySafe: http://www.artistscope.net/copysafe/uploadpix/pbv-uploader.gif

ABOUT ARTISTSCOPE

Artistscope is an artist-oriented company founded in 1997 specifically to address the need for robust image protection systems designed to be used by artists and photographers to protect their visual content online. The company is headquartered in Bribie Island, Australia, with representatives worldwide and free download centres in each major continent for the distribution of downloads and plugins for their client's visitors. Artistscope were the pioneers of image protection and the first company to develop and distribute commercial solutions for online use.

For more information: http://www.Artistscope.net

Artistscope president, William Kent, is available for media interviews on the subject of DRM and intellectual property rights.

ABOUT NEOTROPE

Neotrope(R) is a privately-held company founded in 1983 by marketing guru Christopher Simmons to provide advertising, marketing, PR, design and multimedia services for small business. Neotrope provides technology marketing and public relations to many companies, and is a member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Through various online divisions, including Send2Press.com and DotComMojo.com, Neotrope also provides budget business promotion and marketing services to companies that cannot afford traditional professional-level public relations.

Neotrope president Christopher Simmons is a frequent author on the subject of intellectual property rights and digital rights management.

Neotrope began offering Internet services in 1995 including e-commerce, Web site design, content development, audio/video conversion and Web hosting. Neotrope currently serves hundreds of companies worldwide including Cygnus Business Media, Imageologists Inc., Jackstreet.com, The Civitas Initiative, Morgan Road Records, V-Lite Video Corp., and Respondus Inc.

Neotrope is located in Long Beach (Los Angeles) California, and is the company formerly known as Mindset.

For more information: http://www.Neotrope.com

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