no right click ....

[kosar]

how valuable is adding this to your site if people are pirating your images? if so what programs or scripts are best?

[Farix]

Not valuable at all as there are far too many workaround to get disabling the right click. It also hampers web surfers who frequently use the right click as a navigational ad--such as opening links in a new window or tab.

When you boil all things down, there is nothing you can do to prevent piracy short of not putting the material you want to protect on the Internet in the first place. The next best thing is a paid subscription service.

[microcars]

the "disable right click" trick is kind of lame, it only deters some people and then pisses off others.

I've sliced images up, either into one, two or three vertical images. They load right next to each other and appear as a single image on the web page, but if you "right click" on the image, you only download 1/3 of the image!

this seems to fool people into believing they have downloaded the entire image and they move on.

yeah, there are ways around this, like taking a screenshot and then cropping the image and saving it, but I say make 'em work for the image they are stealing.

I ran across something awhile back that had a transparent GIF on TOP of the image, so if you right clicked, you just downloaded the transparent GIF. Looked pretty frustrating to me.

[Arkantos]

dear microcars,

i like the transparent gif idea very much. thank you.
i have one favour to ask of you. can you tell me how to put one image on top of another in PHP? i am and absolute newbie.
(sticky mailing the code snippet would be greatly appreciated)

thanks again.

[microcars]

I'd love to give you the instructions for the transparent GIF thingie, but I don't know where I saw it. It is in one of those musty parts of my brain. I just remember running across it and was fairly impressed at how well it worked.

[Noisehag]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you simply drop the main image into a container as a background and put the transparent gif in the foreground with an anchor? It doesn't prevent anyone from viewing source or capturing a screenshot, but it is a start.

Bottom line is, there is no sure way to protect your images in cyberspace at this point in time; at least none that I've seen.

[benihana]

image with gif over:

stylesheet:

#myimage {
width:100px;
height:100px;
background-image:url(myimage.jpg);
}

html:

<div id="myimage"><img src="transprent.gif" width="100" height="100" ></div>

just change filenames and dimensions

[webcreativz]

Da best solution for this is to have a WATERMARK of yours on da image itself!

Cheers,
Rahul

[sidyadav]

Coming back on topic, there was a valuable discussion on this a few months ago:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Many here [google.com] also.

Best Solution: Don't do it.

Sid

[webcreativz]

Why I meant the best solution was...

Even though you apply all those scripts/codes, one can always take printscreens of whatever images he/she likes, for which watermarks make the ideal solution.

Cheers,
Rahul

[microcars]

I'm pretty sure that noisehag accurately described the example I had seen of the image as backround w/ transparent GIF in front.

thanks!

[Harry]

Watermarks are indeed the best solutions.

[Arkantos]

thanx for the input, people.

i decided to put all these into the site i am currently building:

transparent gif
selecetive right click disable
cache control (source forge)
prntscrn disable (sourceforge)
screen capture disable (my elder bro)
Hidden watermarks

and the folder in which the images are bieng kept has access control, so ONLY the php page serving the images has access to it.

i agree that no one can ward off a real thief, but with these in the pocket, one can stop at least 99% of all the attacks.

[Harry]

Arkantos, I don't mean to sound snarky, but how about spending more time and energy improving your work and your site, rather than padlocking your images from every conceivable ends?

I know it sounds new age-like, but if you expect people to "steal" your stuff, they will. Most people don't steal. At most they will take your images, add them in their image folders and look at them. There's nothing wrong with that. The few who use your images somewhere else will always find a way to get them. Are you gonna try to erase their cache too?

This is a fight you ultimately can't win, and besides simple measures, like watermarks, you shouldn't be wasting time and energy preventing the impossible.

[Arkantos]

yes harry, i got this kind of a response from my dad too. but the whole thing is i am improving upon the site, that is both the interface and the quality of the content. all the images i am going to have would be hand drawn by me and dad. so comes the need for the site to act like fort knox.

i agree on that point too. maximum ppl download them to the hard drive and keep them there. i myself do that regularly.

your post really calls for a meeting between me and dad.

Thx

[bedlam]

1. transparent gif
   
2. selecetive right click disable
   
3. cache control (source forge)
   
4. prntscrn disable (sourceforge)
   
5. screen capture disable (my elder bro)
   
6. Hidden watermarks

It might also help if you were informed about the actual efficacy of these:

1. A minor impediment at best. It's really not that hard to find your image in the html/css source.
   
2. Not effective if you user is knowledgable enough to turn off javascript or download the Firefox extension [extensions.roachfiend.com]. Also seriously annoying to users who like to use right-click for other stuff while browsing.
   
3. Can't see how you could have much control over this (this one I'm not sure of)
   
4. You might be able to control this in a browser, but you cannot control external applications (or, on a Mac, the OS which has the screen capture utility built right in...) I sort of suspect this is based on javascript, in which case, see the firts item.
   
5. See above.
   
6. This is the best and only potential solution to the problem that you've come up with. If you do a good job of this, you may be able to go after people who actually steal and use your content.
   

You are attempting the impossible. You are allowing the image to actually travel across the internet to my computer and then trying to prevent me from keeping it...it doesn't add up.

I'm not trying to be snarky either, but at least 4 of your 6[!] proposed solutions are trivially circumvent-able ; and you shouldn't kid yourself that it's only 'power users' who can figure that out.

-B

[yeswesell]

Every images of your site will be placed in the temporary folder of the web suffer, it's easy to find.

[Leosghost]

I must remember of the may things that a fisherman could use to open his "can 'o' worms" ...

the words "right click" ..seem to do just fine ..'corse there are others ;)

[monkeythumpa]

Don't let people stealing your content get you down, use it to your advantage. Put your logo or URL across a part of the picture where it doesn't annoy anybody, but where it won't be cropped. That way your content will be a billboard for you wherever it is displayed on the web. I worked for a swimsuit company and the photos we used were on the racy side. Our compeditors were stealing and using our images, as well as "stroker" sites. But all of the images had our URL which was part of our logo so they were actually driving traffic to us. Not trackable but noticeable in traffic since we implemented the solution

[drbrain]

Mozilla/Firefox's Page Info lists all the images used on a page, making it very easy to pull down images no matter how hard you try to avoid it. (Not to mention the right-click-disable-disable checkbox in the javascript preferences.)

The more annoying you try to be about these kinds of things, the more copies of your images you are likely to get sent via email.

[ronin]

This discussion seems to crop up quite often >;->

While people are often quick to point out that no method will secure your images from everyone it does not follow that there is no good reason to secure your images from anyone.

Using CSS is obviously not a very good way of protecting your image from people who know about CSS or from people who use Firefox etc. But I hope it's not too much of a generalisation to say that that demographic is less likely to hijack your images, create their own site by plagiarising yours, hotlink your images, sell your images on eBay, etc.

However, using CSS to give a transparent .gif the background of the image you want to display is incredibly effective at protecting your images from those rank amateurs with a free hosted website who don't know how to download and upload images so they just hotlink straight to your server.

I should know. In May 1997 I was that rank amateur. >;-S

I would add to caveats:

1) I think hotlinking is a far more serious issue than simply having people download your images. It wouldn't be so much of a problem for me, perhaps, if I was using an Apache server, but I'm not.

2) Since viewing a webpage means that all images on the page have downloaded to your computer, I agree it's always worth putting a URL or a mini copyright notice on your most valuable images.