I am looking for a script that prevents unauthorized downloading of pictures. Check for example www.clipart.com If you want to download an image a warning box pops up telling you you have to subscribe (pay) first before you may download. What kind of script is that? Could someone help me, please?

illie

thats a javascript 1. try http://javascript.internet.com i believe they have it there :)

It's easy enough to turn off Javascript and therefore be able to right click and save as normal. You could put the photos in a Flash file - right click and save is always prevented that way.

In case there is no flash knowledge you could try the following.

Change the chmod of the directory you have the images , so that public can not access it.
Then in your code do the verification of the visitor, and if the visitor is allowed to view it then you code should copy the files temporerly to the download folder for the user in a random name
i.e. 123abc.gif
once the visitor is gone... kill the file...

This sound complicated, but its guaranteed

you can also take a screenshot of the page.

That's true - there's no 100% way of protecting anything on the internet. The best you can do is add as many obstacles as possible.

Thanks guys (and girls) for your responses. Can anybody tell me maybe how they prevent copying the images at www.clipart.com Caimin, you said that there is no 100% way of protecting anything on the internet, how would you approach this?

Ilse

Given the high number of images you have on your site, putting them in Flash is probably impractical.

The "no right click" Javascript you've got at the moment probably stops 90% of all potential image thefts, because 90% of users have no idea how to turn off the Javascript or how to dig around in the cache for an image.

It's true a screen shot can be taken but to make sensible use of it you'd need to take the screen shot, import it into a graphics program and crop the image back to orginal size.

This takes a fair bit of technical knowledge, a graphics program and a fair bit of time. Most of the lazy right-click brigade will just go to another clip art site to right-click and save - it's just so much easier.

One extra thing you might consider is to put a browser sniffer on the pages to detect - and re-route - off-line browsers like Web Copier. Use PHP, etc. for this rather than JavaScript, so that users cannot turn it off.

Throw in a few little obstacles to ease of stealing and you'd be surprised how many people can't be bothered to steal from you.

Hope this helps.

You can also put a nasty watermark on the image, in addition to the stuff mentioned above, but someone with photoshop skills will be able to remove watermarks, but you wont be able to stop the die-hard, hardcore rippers.


One extra thing you might consider is to put a browser sniffer on the pages to detect - and re-route - off-line browsers like Web Copier. Use PHP, etc. for this rather than JavaScript, so that users cannot turn it off.


True... But also some of these programs, you can rename their "user agent" to make them appear as a regular browser.

Heres a suggestion, but it will probably be a lot of work.

Have a php powered script that does what tai fu said, and in addition with a no-right click script, and have the image actually displayed using javascript so if someone disabled javascript, the image wont show up. Also you could have the page with the image popup in a popup window with no browser controls. and to prevent the "save target as", you could have session sensitive form link that generates the random pages.

Just my 2 cents.

Go with a water mark...

Ohh... here's another idea...

Cut the image into 4 pieces, prevent right click, add a watermark, disable image toolbar, put the image as a background with a invasable gif on top, disable dragging, use a script to clear out the clipboard every second...

Well... Maybe just stick with the watermark

( if you disable right click, only use it on the images, not the whole page! )

Putting the image as the bgimage in a table and an invisable gif ontop work pretty well...

Thanks guys, I am going to sift through all of this and make it work for me!

Ilse

lol, ill bet if you use all this stuff combined, you could seriously frustrate some people.