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Thanks everyone.
Using PDF files (which should be avoided unless absolutely needed.)
Putting your text into an image file.
Using CSS with a transparent image overlay. I think this option works, but I have never used it to protect text myself, so I could be wrong. I do know it works for preventing people from right clicking on an image to save it (they end up saving the transparent image only). There are some pretty knowlegable members in the CSS forum that can help you with this. But someone could still view source and get the html version of the text that way.
But all in all, if you put it on the web, someone is capable of stealing it. Have you made it easy for people to send your content to others, such as through a "mail this article to a friend" at the bottom of each one? If you make it easy for people to pass it along to others, it is less likely to end up copied-and-pasted without your copyright/contact info.
<body ondragstart="return false" onselectstart="return false">
I think it only works on IE, and even then, just turning off JavaScript defeats it. But as you said, you only want to deter the casual use of copy paste - and a serious thief can always get your copy.
<p id="protectedText"
onselectstart="return false;"
onclick="return false;"
onmousedown="return false;"
onfocus="return false;">
This is some text that you cannot hilite.
</p>
But as tedster indicated they can always just disable javascript altogether (or for that matter view the source) and then hilite whatever they want.
A couple other solutions that only work in NN / Moz. right now:
Set a rule using the :active pseudo-selector.
#protectedText:active {
display: none;
}
It makes it a little hard to select the text if it disappears when you try! ;)
Or you could alternately use Mozilla's pseudo-properties.
#protectedText {
-moz-user-focus: ignore;
-moz-user-input: disabled;
-moz-user-select: none;
}
Ps. The CSS3 draft has a 'user-select' property that is equivalent to '-moz-user-select'
But even at this, a nice view-source: will let one select and copy as much as they wish to.
Jordan
Using PDF files does not disable copying at all.
Using PDF files does not disable copying at all.
Unless you set "disable printing" and "disable copying" in the Acrobat security options when generating the PDF.
www.ecn.purdue.edu/~laird/PDF/
The actual source should start somewhere about 1-2 pages after the white space, and will usually be indented by about a page or more. You got to scroll down and then right a ways before you can see it. Sneaky, eh? :)
Jordan
