Become an Internet Law Expert in 60 seconds!

Protecting your Website's Images from Stealing: Is it really possible?

It is simply not possible to prevent someone from copying your website images. If someone is skilled and determined there's no way to stop them from abusing your website and your content. But there's still light in the end of the tunnel. You can use some semi-sophisticated techniques to limit the amount of people that can copy your website's images. Keep reading.

The first method I recommend is called digital image watermarking. A watermark can be visible or can be invisibly embedded into the pixels of an image. There are companies like Digimarc offering digital watermarking services and providing a digital identity for any media object, thus protecting it from stealing. But these systems are not fool proof, they have serious weaknesses and they are costly.

Another method would be to hide your original image behind a transparent GIF using style sheets. If someone right clicks the image and selects to save it, it will only save the transparent GIF, not the original image. Similarly, you can insert the image as a table background. But in both cases a visitor can always make use of the -PrtScrn- button to copy anything from your website.

Embedding the images in Flash files is another popular method. Now, this is a neat method to use, it will make it difficult for a thief to steal your work. You cannot right click and copy the image if it's embedded in a flash file. But the flash file is already on your hard drive (cache). You can use any flash de-compiler software to easily grab any contents from a flash executable file. And of course you can simply use the -PrtScn- button to copy anything you want from the webpage.

You see, there's nothing you can do to prevent a thief from stealing your content. Fortunately there are services like Copyscape that monitor your website's activity and detect potential thieves. You can also have a look at this copyright protection guide written by a former federal prosecutor and learn about the same legal techniques that the top internet attorneys and big law firms use.

Article Source: http://www.digitalstarproducts.com/star/-detail-52.html

By Mary Markell

Protecting your Website's Content: Just don't bother

The internet is the best place if you want to steal content. It makes it really easy to copy any information you see on webpages, whether it is text, images, media or pdf files etc. A lot of web designers or webmasters are spending hours using various techniques to protect their webpage content. Well, the fact is that there's no method that can effectively protect your website content from copying.

When you view a webpage that means that this particular webpage is already on your hard drive. All the words, images, source code, media files are already downloaded to your temporary internet files folder on your pc. It's a matter of simply moving those files to another location on your hard drive and you've got all the content.

So, whether you like it or not there's no way to prevent a skilled and determined thief from stealing your content. Here's is my advice: If you have something that's really valuable and don't want people to make use of it without your permission, then just don't upload it on the web.

Protection methods
Disabling the text copy. Lots of webmasters use this method hoping that it will protect the webpage's content from being copied. This method is very easy to implement. You just add a small java script code which prevents the website visitor from highlighting any text on the web page and make use of the copy function. And what happens if your visitor has disabled java script? Or if they simply view the source code of the webpage from the browser menu? My advice: Just don't bother using this method, it will only annoy your visitors.

A very popular method is the "No right click" script. This is a java script that disables the right mouse click on webpages so that visitors will not be able to look at the web page source code. My advice: never disable the right mouse click. Again, you will only succeed in annoying your website visitors.

Another popular method is the HTML stripping method. The idea is to remove all spaces in your source code so that it looks like a big long line. That way it will make it harder for people to read it and will also make your webpages download faster. But what happens if you want to edit that webpage yourself? My advice: Don't even think about using this method especially if you keep updating your webpages often.

By far the most useless method of protecting your content is to convert all your text to images. I've seen only a few websites implementing this technique. It will take you years to convert all text, you will confuse the search engines (I doubt you will ever rank in any search engine) because they will not be able to read any text, and if someone desperately wants your content all it takes is to sit down and retype it manually!

There are other similar so called content protection methods, but I firmly believe that there's no point to try to protect your content using any of them. It's just a waste of time. If someone really wants your website content, no matter you do, there's no way to prevent them from stealing. What you can do is use the popular Copyscape service which monitors your content or learn some secret techniques top internet attorneys and prosecutors use. Be your own web lawyer and protect your website from copyright infringement.

Article Source: http://www.digitalstarproducts.com/star/-detail-52.html

By Mary Markell