InformAction Forums

Hi

I spend around three hours a day writing content for my site only to find that some website owners copy the content, this happens regularly and usually involves me having to spend a couple of hours per site collecting all the links so I can raise a DMCA. Recently someone suggested that I use the following code so I did , and it works by preventing people copying from the screen. Happily thinking everything was a-okay until I got a message in my shoutbox 'dumb moth&&^%& i use noscript i can copy if i want'. Which lead me here.

I understand they can view the source but most of the time I don't they'll bother. Is it possible you can somehow exclude this bit of code from being blocked from noscript? . Thanks

Hi simmad,

Nothing in code will prevent published text getting copied by a determined person; it's just that NS made it simple for your shoutbox correspondent.
NS is primarily an application whose spirit has always been to give the user more control over the internet, not less.

The various online copyright infringement legislations are, unfortunately for your purposes, the only reliable way of policing the kind of theft you say your work is subject to. Otherwise, all online publishers who want to closely control how their work is used would already be using your simple litigation-free solution - freezing text inside code.
Text, not just online text, has always been subject to fair use conventions, and a publisher has to prove that quotation is unfair use. Not even the fabulously rich and powerful Harry Potter author can prevent online quotation from her books - even though she is very successful in policing take-down orders for almost all quotes on the net after the fact.

It's complete folly to think you can stop anyone from copying anything that is on the WWW. The very nature of HTTP and HTML is founded on standards and openness. For example, even if you had an iron clad way to use undefeatable JavaScript to protect your content, nothing is stopping me from making a direct HTTP request (e.g. wget) to get your source files. If you then decided to also encrypt the source files, I could simply use FireBug to inspect the content after the browser has rendered it.

Thus as GOL pointed out, you can't escape this problem. IMHO, just do your best to make your content easily recognizable and it'll make it easier to catch others using it.

-Foam

It is quite unfortunate and happens shamefully too much. However, legislation is lame at best and does absolutely nothing to protect anyone without a long, ugly and often moot legal battle. Although some content is protected and enforcements are in place to some extent, its generally left up to the honor system since the information on the web is generally considered public domain (without splitting hairs). Doesn't make it right but none the less, its an unfortunate part of open society.