how to protect part of my templates . encryption?

[blakekr]

I distribute some free templates as linkware. Of course, lots of people remove the link and even more annoyingly, many people remove the link and then rebrand the template as their own.

I've been wondering if I can make this more difficult by encrypting my link into the template. Of course, I suppose they could just remove the encrypted part of the template, although I could try to make that more difficult by tying up some of the table elements with it.

What do you think? Is there a sane way to approach this?

[asquithea]

You can't protect your content from users, let alone developers, so I wouldn't waste time trying.

Why link-ware? If it's user click-thrus you're looking for, maybe you could replace the income by charging a small amount for the templates. If it's developer recognition, deempahsize the linkage, moving it into the source code as a comment. Devs are more likely to leave it in if it's not visible on their website.

[blakekr]

Thanks for your honest feedback. The main purpose is SEO, expanding the number of links back to my site. My target audience is consumers, not other developers.

It's been pretty consistent since the Web began, that you can't protect your content, but I thought I'd ask.