preventing others to copy images?

[wisebuddy]

Anyone knows how to prevent others from copying images displayed on our site?

Any thoughts appreciated.
Thanks.

[magpie2419]

Anyone knows how to prevent others from copying images displayed on our site?

Any thoughts appreciated.
Thanks.

It cannot be done once its shown on anyones screen its a simple matter to copy the image if you want to, the best thing to do is watermark them or use a low resolution

[1018 logoz]

watermarks are great maybe disabling the right click here's a simple one.

<script language="JavaScript">
<!-- var popup="Sorry, right-click
is disabled.";
function noway(go) { if
(document.all) { if (event.button == 2) { alert(popup); return false; } } if (document.layers)
{ if (go.which == 3) { alert(popup); return false; } } } if (document.layers)
{ document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN); } document.onmousedown=noway; // -->
</script>

but they can still get around this.. you can do your page in flash since there is no images in flash it all one file...

[felgall]

The browser copies the image to their computer BEFORE it displays the page. If you stop it doing that then it can't display the image at all. Once on their computer you can't control what they do with it and so any protection needs to be in the image itself to have any effect.

The best way is to lower the resolution as much as possible and watermark the image. If they don't remove the watermark then they advertise where they stole the image from. If they do remove it then the resolution will be lowered further and if you had it low enough to start with it will make the image useless.

JavaScript solutions are useless because anyone wanting to steal your image can either ignore the JavaScript protection and obtain the image some other way or can simply turn JavaScript off. All those solutions do is to annoy legitimate visitors who use other options in the context menu for navigating the web who don't realise how easy it is to disable such a script.

[siguie]

If nothing else people can always use a screen capture program to get images BUT a sneaky way to stop simple saves is to use CSS levels and put a transparent image over the one you want protected. When people try to use right click save-as they get the transparent one

If you mung your html this method confounds more people than I would have expected

[wallaceb]

if you do want to add a watermark or text to the images, you can use Fast Stone Image Viewer, it is free, and allows you to do many handy things with large numbers of images all a once

[felgall]

If nothing else people can always use a screen capture program to get images BUT a sneaky way to stop simple saves is to use CSS levels and put a transparent image over the one you want protected. When people try to use right click save-as they get the transparent one

If you mung your html this method confounds more people than I would have expected

Of course those who really want to steal the image just copy the file from their internet cache to a more permanent location and so get the original image rather than a screen capture.

All "protection" methods that are done outside of the image file itself only prevent accidental theft.

[pwillis]

What siguie said is indeed interesting except I've never come across a website that couldn't be captured by a simple command>shift>3 screenshot (Apple). Some sites forbid a "right click save" but it's never deterred me from getting a picture if I'm hell bent on it.

[Ferdinand]

All "protection" methods that are done outside of the image file itself only prevent accidental theft.

I think many Internet users actually don't know how to circumvent protected images (like adding a transparent image), but of course the professional users and geeks will not be obstructed at all.

[felgall]

I think many Internet users actually don't know how to circumvent protected images (like adding a transparent image), but of course the professional users and geeks will not be obstructed at all.

Anyone intending to steal images knows at least a dozen ways to bypass any protection not in the image itself. Just using a browser that disables no right click scripts gets past the most obvious "protection" (any browser other than IE allows that and some even have it disabled by default).

The biggest effect disabling the right mouse button has is to annoy legitimate visitors who use that menu for legitimate purposes such as navigating the web and who will leave your site never to return because they are too new toknow how to turn off your block.

A transparent overlay does no harm and does at least prevent accidental theft of your images by newbies who don't know that they are not allowed to copy images from the web without the owner's permission.