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I have already disabled the right click function.
I would love to disable alt C and the view source option. Is this possible?
I know the website still can get copied, but at least this would stop most of the copiers.
jd
[google.com...]
The casual person who takes a few pages or images are harmless compared to bots and site capture tools which can suck down your entire site in a matter of minutes. IMO your time would be better spent building up a good .htaccess file to keep those types in check.
[edited by: BlueSky at 6:01 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2003]
D'oh...BlueSky got there first while I was writing the same thing! :)
I use my right mouse button to navigate back, refresh, etc. When I get to a site and right click to go back or something and I get a popup saying "Don't try and steal my precious image, code, etc" I get peeved and leave the site immediately. If someone wants the code or images they will find a way get it so IMHO disabling the right click button or fooling with peoples usual settings is just going to discourage the average user.
Same here, I use mouse gestures to navigate back and forward and to do other things. I use the right mouse button to trigger my mouse gestures. Needless to say if a site disables my right mouse button I dont visit again.
And of course there is nothing to be done? The Internet rules, except on this topic. Here it's a joke. Very frusterated.
jd
I feel your pain - same thing happened to one of my sites a couple of weeks ago - images, html, structure, vaguely similar domain name etc :(
Luckily the offender made a hideous job of changing colors etc so it looks awful, and Google appears to have recognized it as duplicate content and doesn't show any of their pages :) Still made my blood boil though!
Your best option is prob. pestering the hosting company, informing Google etc until they take action. Chances are, as mentioned above, the offender used a tool to just suck all the content down to theircomputer. Disabling right-click etc has no effect on these tools.
The only thing I'd suggest is to spend your time on making your site better and better. Make it easy to use, easy to find, fast, attractive, comprehensive etc. Watch your logs for what your visitors are searching for, and use this to write more and more content. Blow these swine out of the water!
I look at the source code for a lot of sites, mostly as a learning tool for myself (I never copy - but it's nice to see how some tricks are done). Thanks to some tools posted by other people on this site, and my own research, I find it pretty easy to find the "hidden" code that is being protected so carefully. And I'm no expert...
Good luck getting the theft resolved. You've got lots of options - and lots of good ideas already given on this thread.
Where is google to protect me of this copying? All I can do is complain, but like you said, it makes your blood boil! I rather just create content then chase these sites down. Argggghhh.
jd
write %got-this-page.html read http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/6418.htmThat's right: 1 line. If I wanted to parse the page, find all the links and images and download them too, that'd take another half-dozen lines, maybe. And one more line of code to spoof the user-agent name to anything I want.
(You can do similar in Perl and other scripting languages too. The REBOL script is just an example to show how trivial the task is).
So I can capture the surface of your site very easily. And you can't stop me.
But I can't capture the depth: the business intelligence underlying it.
After all, if I copy a page from Amazon or Google, I haven't got their databases, their search expertise, or any other deep item that makes their sites worth visiting. I just got a file of HTML.
If your sites are so shallow that "what I see is all there is" then think about delving deeper.
Very hard to protect written content unless you use something like flash or make sections of your site subscription based. The latter is what I plan to do on my second site. They can steal the free stuff but the good stuff they'll have to pay.
I wonder if you could id your competitors by IP and feed them disinformation.
(1) Every so often, I change the templates to give the pages a fresh appearance - something the copier would find very difficult to do, as he does not have the template.
(2) Also, I use the PHP script to put today's date on the page - so when the copier's site is accessed, it merely shows the date/time the site was copied as today's date (!).
(3) Also, on every page, there is a link to the page itself e.g. clicking on the title will take you back to the page itself, or at the bottom of the page it says "Filename: http:*//www......" which is clickable.
Put together, anyone reading the copied page would smell a rat easily.
Finally, take solace from the fact that many "big" websites experience the same problem, except on a potentially bigger scale e.g. banks, paypal etc where people try to copy the site to trick people into giving their passwords etc.
That said, stolen material is very easy to take care of, especially if their web host is in the same country as you.
Once a web host is made aware of copyright infringed material they are then legally responsible for it's removal.
Of course proving that it's yours technically requires some legal BS most of the time. Fortunately the majority of web hosts will cooperate with you by investigating on their own. Most of the time it's very obvious who copied and who didn't. In which case all the host will want from you is a signed affirmation that you are the owner of the content in question and they will take it offline.
Fortunately the majority of web hosts will cooperate with you by investigating on their own.
Well, not from my experience. I find that the "majority of web hosts" hide behind rhetoric that enables them to do absolutely nothing until the victim has hopped through as many legal hoops as can be tolerated by their interpretation of the DMCA, which may include numerous emails, letters, faxes, costly signature verification from notaries, copyright and trademark registrations, the list goes on ad infinitum!
This is an ongoing battle, but currently there are at least 8 pages published on the web that are displaying copyrighted content of ours; one of which even flaunting our registered trademark. As is sadly the case with many other rights issues, the criminal receives (free) sanctuary, while the hundreds of US dollars we spent in guise of protecting our work, supports futility.
If they don't cooperate then the law is so clearly on your side (any original work becomes legally copyrighted as soon as it's published) that it doesn't really cost all that much to have the content removed. It's not something that often makes it to court unless the owner of the material wants damages... In which case you have to have gone the extra step to pay for a copyright.
But I do display a Copyright Notice, and it does at least strike a reasonably professional bell with me - it says this is my page
So am I completely off base here? It sure seems like I am, based the other posts in this thread. After discussing this thread with the boss (I make him sit down and read these threads) he suggested we make a change on our copyright notice to read something to the effect of: "If you want our images and layout, go to this page to read our terms" I nixed this idea altogether.
But I still believe a simple copyright notice does not infringe on our users ability to navigate the site or make purchases, and as far as I know there has never been a single complaint. Maybe this topic deserves a new thread, since this one is dedicated to preventing the theft of content.
Content jackers nearly never see this if you mix it into your code properly. Then when they post it on your webpage you have the evidence sitting in plain sight.
...I disable the right click on my pages, it's not an attempt to stop anyone viewing my code, sim is showing me everything even as I write this. But I do display a Copyright Notice....
I habitually right click to open links in a new window when I am in sites that I am interested in to leave the "main page" open while I scout around for what I am looking for.
Nothing irritates me more than having the right click disabled. Anyone who knows enough to actually copy the pages is going to know enough to know how to circumvent it.
I habitually right click to open links in a new window when I am in sites that I am interested in to leave the "main page" open while I scout around for what I am looking for.
Point taken Patrick. Actually I do the same thing, but not on my own site. Maybe I should add a "Go to the Games" link to my pages, and after frustrating myself for a while I'd remove the right click code on my pages. Or, maybe I'll just defer to the wisdom of other developers and remove it without any more questions/arguments.
and for all of you who are going to be all indignant when a right click doesn't work on any of my sites ... bye --see ya ...
- First of all, it's not much of a lock. A child could pry it open with a screwdriver or pliers.
- Second, it probably won't be pried-- someone determined to get at the contents knows a knife to the fabric is faster than unzipping it in the first place
- It's not going to stop anyone from stealing the entire bag.
All it's going to do, then, is annoy everyone in line behind him as he fumbles to unlock it for airport security, and slow him down when he wants to stow his PalmPilot or retrieve a paperback.
Lastly, fewer crooks are after his unfashionable clothes and tacky gifts than he thinks :-).
I'd compare disabling the right-click to those tiny padlocks some people put on the zippers of their softside luggage.
