Forum Moderators: mack
Even if you had all kinds of fancy scripts it will still only takes one press of the "print screen" button on any keyboard and you have the image.
Simon.
If you can see it in a browser, you can steal it.
If you really value your images and want to protect them, put a watermark or some other identifying graphic across the image. Chances are, the competitor won't want to be bothered taking the time to remove it. You'll see this done on many of stock image or poster sites. Good luck!
[dynamicdrive.com...]
[learnxpress.com...]
This may frustrate your thieves enough to move on to someone else. Since they are stealing, they are usually lazy by nature and may not bother finding the image in your source.
You can also try digitally watermarking all your images to show ownership and then sending cease and desist letters to violaters. It is actually amazing how many webmasters don't know this is wrong or just don't think anyone will do anything about it.
I advice you to temporarily to turn JScript support off in your browser.
Most people you want nick/borrow stuff from have simply lifted them from somewhere else and want to pretend they own them.
I also find that sites thats uyse invisibilty on an image in order to antialias with a coloured background can often have images that are the hardest to nick.
Print screen and you get an image on their nast yellow
Right click and you get a pixely image surrounded by pixely grey.
It makes me thinkt hat coured BG and time spent with invisibilty might make it more hassle than its worth to nick the image.
It won't stop them from copying the image, but it does tend to quickly settle arguments as to who is the copyright holder of the image.
If a user browses your site and sees a picture, IT IS ALEADY ON HIS/HER COMPUTER, as it has already been cached, everything viewed in a browser window has been downloaded fully onto the client PC before viewing. So no amount of scripting is going to make any difference.
You have three options then.
1) Live with it, after all you decide to put the pictures out there for anyone to see, complaining about people taking them is like leaving a laod of £10 notes outside on the pavement in the morning and expecting them all to be there when you get home.
2) Don't put your pics online in the first place.
3) Put degraded versions online. This works well if you are selling pictures becasue you can put a low resolution/partial/watermarked picture online and sell the full one. However it doesnt stop the person you sold it to then distributing it.
For the life of me though I can't see why anyone would need to protect their pictures unless they are selling them for some reason.
Example: [webmasterworld.com...]
From where I am at, I figure that deciding whether or not to use 'no right click' COMPLETELY depends on the website and its purpose (in my case a small-town B&B).
For instance, I find it annoying if a competitor grabs an animated image and/or some well-written text and those things are part of my 'business image'. Using a 'no right click' may deter most competitors, who in this particular area are by no means experienced web-masters!. As for annoying your visitors: Most visitors to my website will not be annoyed, as many will not use the right-click in the first place. But of course everyone will have to consider all those valuable points before deciding.
But I agree with you all, that there is NO way to protect your picture or images or text from anyone who really wants it. I have in the meantime checked out and used the links and advice of some of you and put the no right click on my pages and I love it. Thanks so much for your help!
Kabouter
Chilliwack, BC
Watermark the images instead.
Don't try to prevent stealing. Just, make them not worth stealing.
People use right mouse click for other things like navigation. Most sites would not be caught dead with this because they know the bad impression it leaves, it doesn't work in all browsers, it's useless in preventing those who are apt to steal, or stopping anyone from going into their browser's cache to take what they want.
