Discouraging Internet Photo Thieves

[David Drummond]

All you have to do is VIEW SOURCE of the page and all the URLs to the images are right there in the source code. That no right click stuff only stops the honest people.

 

[Blake Michaleski]

yea but usually they'll try the right click first. then they will get my nice little message.

It's just like locks on stuff. if someone wants something bad enough, they'll get it either way. even if you couldnt get around the right click thing all you gotta do is a screen capture. I figured it took about 5 minutes to put one more obstacle in between a potential photo theif and my photos. plus it looks cool right? :wink:

 

[Doren Berge]

Im still able to right click and save images with the latest version of Opera.

Dang...forgot about the Opera browser. Perhaps we can add code to block anything other than IE or FF? I do that on my main site to restrict it to IE only because of all the complex DHTML I use and was too lazy to code for NS (this was well before the rise of FireFox though).

For many reasons that I won't go into here, might I suggest a Standards Compliant version?

Many versions of IE in use are not compliant. But most modern browsers are. And even better, a standards compliant version would be backwards compatible and accessible to all.

Along with a script you could also hide your images from "view source" by placing your image references into external CSS files as div backgrounds. You could manage all of your presentation in one master style sheet (layout, fonts, colors, etc.), then import additional style sheets that only contain the photo reference divs for that specific page. Then none of the image references would show up in "view source."

Someone could follow the cascade of imports and linked CSS and eventually find the image reference. But combining this with a standards compliant disable script and a cryptic naming convention could make things extremely tedious for casual thieves. And better yet, once you set up a standards solution would be easy to maintain and modify your pages.

Good thread.

db



http://stormcast.net/

 

[Shane Young]

Two words

Print Screen.

Will save screen to clipboard. Then all you have to do is put into a picture editing program and crop. If image is bigger than one screen, could still do it, just involves aligning partial cuts.

Take care
Shane

 

[David Drummond]

All that is fine and dandy when you have it on your own website. But what are you gonna do if you link an image here? It's wide open in the forum.

 

[Doren Berge]

All that is fine and dandy when you have it on your own website. But what are you gonna do if you link an image here? It's wide open in the forum.

I guess that would be an argument for keeping "Target Area > Reports" password protected.

 

[Ben Cotton]

I got both Steve's and Blake's images with Firefox 1.0.4

Ben

 

[Bryce Stone]

Blake, all I had to do was click on your picture. After it enlarged, your right-click message failed to show up. I immediately copied it and put it on my website. Now it's MY picture, and I'd appreciate it if you took my picture off your website. Immediately.

lol . . . just kidding. I don't even have a website, but you may want to see if you can fix the problem of right click working after enlargement..

 

[Mike Peregrine]

I was just about to bring up the same issue as Bryce - but he beat me to it. I use MS FrontPage as my HTML editor and insert galleries for each chase. Today I revised every gallery (whew) ... I'm inserting a watermark on images that are most valuable to me, but in past years' galleries where I don't care as much I was just inserting the java code provided here. It works great as far as the thumbnails are concerned, but as Bryce brings out - as soon as I enlarge the image I can right-click.

Any ideas? Wanting to reload the entire website over the weekend -

Thanks -

 

[Steve Miller TX]

updated/improved code

OK, some of the issues raised here were 1) Javascript disabling 2) Opera browser 3) 3-button mice 4) Using the no-script code in a pop-up window

Keep in mind that all of this is NOT intended to be foolproof. This is only meant to discourage the casual thief or those that don't understand that taking the images are actually stealing if they aren't selling it. As David pointed out, saving a screen shot and editing out the photo is still an option. Again, this is only a deterrent, not a fool-proof preventative measure. I hope everybody actually reads this before posting ;-)

For users that diable javascript, add this code between the <head> tags in your code:

<noscript>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=../browserError.htm">
</noscript>

This will take them to another page that you designate if they have javascript disabled. Of course, a user can still disable meta refresh in their browser, but again, this is only a deterrent! ;-)

To allow only IE and Firefox browsers and specifically block Opera browsers as well as accomodate mice with 3 buttons, use this code here:

<script>
msg="Nasty message goes here";

if ((navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Opera")== -1) && (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE")!= -1) || (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")!= -1)) {

function clickIE4(){
if (event.button==2){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}

function clickNS4(e){
if (document.layers||document.getElementById&&!document.all){
if (e.which==2||e.which==3){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}

if (document.layers){
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
document.onmousedown=clickNS4;
}
else if (document.all&&!document.getElementById){
document.onmousedown=clickIE4;
}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("alert(msg);return false");

}else{
window.document.location.href = "../browserError.htm";
}
</script>

Now, you can save the javascript code above as a file and call it something like "noclick.js" and be sure to remove the<script></script> before doing so. Then, call the code in your webpage with this line:

<SCRIPT SRC="../noclick.js"></SCRIPT>

I'm using this in my pop-up windows that contain the larger pic. Here are two lines of code that will help you do that if you have saved the no-click described above:

win = window.open("", menubar='no', toolbar='no');
win.document.write("<html><SCRIPT SRC='../noclick.js'></SCRIPT><body><img src=01.JPG></body></html>");

I hope this helps reduce some of the swiping of photos out there. I also believe that by doing this and somebody still steals your photos and uses it for profit, you'll have an easier time proving their malicious attempt by showing you employed considerable effort to prevent copying of images. 8)

 

[Oscar van der Velde]

could "steal" without any problem in IE6

It is still easy to steal. I saw the rightclick prevention... but once you open the big image and simply drag it with you left mouse button into another open explorer screen, you can then do Save as. You will see the file location in the cache directory instead of the url on the server. If if you could prevent this, images viewed from a website *are already* in the cache on someone's computer... nothing to do about it! Tricks only prevent against people who don't know better (which are usually not the kind of people you should worry about)

cheers,
Oscar

 

[Steve Miller TX]

Again, and I'll re-emphasize this, it is not in ANY way meant to be a fool-proof method nor a preventative measure. There are several ways around this including your method. It discourages the casual thief where the right click method is way too convenient and easy to steal images. With the proper warning message, it would hopefully show the would-be thief that you are dead serious about protecting your images and that they should think twice about doing so. Plus, it shows very clear intent by you in displaying your images that you exercised "considerable effort" to protect your images. This comes in handy of you go after somebody legally.

I would also strongly encourage watermarking your images visibly and/or invisibly. There are good threads here in the forum and elsewhere on the internet.

 

[Doren Berge]

Re: updated/improved code

To allow only IE and Firefox browsers and specifically block Opera browsers

I'm not sure why you would want to block any browser. That's like like slamming the door in a visitors face because they drove up to your house in the wrong car. You never know who will come knocking. Could be Ed Mcmahon. Where's the hospitality?

I'd hate to see a fellow chaser's site become a Beta Max of web pages.

Web Standards good. Accessibility for all.

db

 

[Steve Miller TX]

Re: updated/improved code

I'm not sure why you would want to block any browser. That's like like slamming the door in a visitors face because they drove up to your house in the wrong car. You never know who will come knocking. Could be Ed Mcmahon. Where's the hospitality?

Well, feel free to remove/alter the code to do as you wish. This whole thread is about trying to discourage those trying to swipe your photos. This could easily get off into the land of web standards, browser wars, etc which was never my intent and I think be extremely counter-productive. So, I'm not going to go there. The reason I excluded Opera is because it can get around the javascript code to prevent right-clicking. Pure and simple.

 

[nickgrillo]

Whoa! :shock: