I have a Photography site and wish to stop downloading of the photos. I know how I can do this with no right click in Java. I don’t know how I can stop IE6 from displaying the icons normally top left of a pic that giving the option to print, download send or open my pic’s. The pages I use to show the photos are std html so vbscript will not work as not ASP, how can I do this with Javascript?

1. Someone with a little knolledge of HTML can easily bypass the no right click javascript.
2. Its javascript not java :)
3. Stopping people downloading an image to their harddrive is impossible if you want it displayed on a website
4. The best way to stop it is to print 'sample' over the image so you are the only one with the original

Gullanian wrote: Someone with a little knolledge of HTML can easily bypass the no right click javascript. Its javascript not java :) Stopping people downloading an image to their harddrive is impossible if you want it displayed on a website The best way to stop it is to print 'sample' over the image so you are the only one with the original

Summary: You can't stop it. (Kind of reminds me of an old Twisted Sister tune  .)

I had a feeling that it was that way. Sample stamping time it is then.

LOL. Here's what it comes down to: If you can view it you can save it.

2 ultimate ways of saving an image no matter what:

1. The image is always saved in your Temp Inet files. Get it from there.

2. If it's stored in a flash file, you can just Print Screen and then paste it somewhere, then save it. (You can also de-comp a flash file and rip the original images out...a bit more complex)

. necronom .

Necronom, thats not always true!

After i got my granduation pictures i was told to go to a website and pick the ones i wanted. I tryed getting a copy so i could just print it out. First i tryed to save the image, but that didnt work. Then i tryed to view the source and get the image, again that didnt work. Then i tryed to print the screen and copy it into photoshop, but the only images coming up where "Image copyrighted" all over it. I tryed everything. I even looked in the temp folders and it wasnt there.

They where using some kind of software that hides the image somehow so no one can get it without paying for it first.

MadDog wrote: Necronom, thats not always true! After i got my granduation pictures i was told to go to a website and pick the ones i wanted. I tryed getting a copy so i could just print it out. First i tryed to save the image, but that didnt work. Then i tryed to view the source and get the image, again that didnt work. Then i tryed to print the screen and copy it into photoshop, but the only images coming up where "Image copyrighted" all over it. I tryed everything. I even looked in the temp folders and it wasnt there. They where using some kind of software that hides the image somehow so no one can get it without paying for it first.

Maybe you should have taken a digital picture of your screen with a camera!

I suppose you could have an ActiveX component that blacks out the screen when Print Screen is used, but you could get around that by making the window lose focus. And I don't think it would be able to stop third party screen capture utilities.

Back to the beginning... nope.

That ActiveX idea is a neat one though. You know of anywhere that talks about how to code that or a place that impliments it?

. necronom .

It seam that this subject is a hard one to beat and I have been working on this for some time without result. The only thing is to place text stamp on the photos but this to me only destroys the viewing of the photo. If you have good software like photoshop 7.0 and the mind to do so, you can remove the text stamps without trace. So yes round and round we go. All I can do for now is place the photos at a limited resolution so this will stop the printing out at a hi standard (A4 sheet).

Interesting problem don’t you think?

How do you stop someone form downloading something they already have to view?

You think of it and it seams there is a way around it like downloading the pages (save as in explorer). I would like to work this one out some time and believe there must be a way and someone has found it.

The thing is, your downloading the image when your viewing it.  So theres not really anyway to not download it and show it, if you see what I mean!

At the end of the day, its not possible.  Best solution is a text stamp.

BoLt wrote: I don’t know how I can stop IE6 from displaying the icons normally top left of a pic that giving the option to print, download send or open my pic’s.

place this in your header and that will stop the image toolbar as its known in IE6

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">

It seams like I am now starting to get solutions to help reduce unauthorized coping of the photos. I know now that the only real solution at this moment in time is to not show them at all. I don’t wish to do that so all I can do is is reduce coping.

The solution to place a stamp on the photos is a good on but again with photo shop 7 and know how you get get round this one.

The solution to cut the images up works well but again using photo shop 7 and know how you can re-fit them together.

A combination of all that has been suggested will make it harder to copy and in the long run help reduce copying photos.

Ok just to blow things out of the water and change things a bit.

Lets say if a copyright is placed on a photo and you find a link to display the photo is placed on a site that is not yours. The photo is still on your site, there is just a link to display it. Has the copyright been violated as the photo has not been copied?

Nice one ljamal I wondered how that one was worked out thankz.

There are a couple sure fire ways to protect your images:

1. Use the <INVISIBLE> </INVISIBLE> tags around the entire document.
   
2. Use the DONTSTEAL attribute in the <IMG> tag.
   
3. Ftp to your server, select all files and directories, hit "Delete".
   
4. Put every existing copy of every file on floppies, place them in a shoebox and bury them in the backyard. There is another version of this method which involves placing the floppies in a plastic bag and hiding them in a different sort of hole. Both are equally effective.
   
5. Password protect your entire site and make sure no one has the password, not even you.
   
6. Employ a small but fanatically loyal and well-armed band of mercenaries to guard your site.
   
7. Start>Run>format C:\
   
8. Attack dogs, preferably rabid. 

Photoshop wouldnt be able to get rid of stamps if you didnt make them see through.  Just put 'SAMPLE SAMPLE SAMPLE' in some small unobtrusive colour in bands accross it.

In regards to hotlinking images:

The image doesnt actualy exist on their server, so they arent owning a copy of the image, therfore theoreticaly its ok.

You can however make ASP scripts to stop images being hotlinked which is cool and useful to save on bandwidth.

Thatz not a bad fix God_Struth I like that one.

I took that theory a step farther... you may want to check it out at my site http://www.BodyMod.org - BodyMod.org .

If you go through the pics and look at the newest ones (the one's the don't have any thumbnails yet, the images are "protected" via transparrent gif's, div tags, on-the-fly "mock" branding, background images, javascript, and ASP.  ...I really wanted to keep people from getting my photo's without my logo on em.

Another site that I use frequently is CDCovers.cc. They have a very interesting way of loading pictures (which I'm now working on incorporating in BodyMod.org). The images aren't protected themselves, cuz you're supposed to save them, but the path to th images is kept secret, which is a big deal.

They do somthing like this:
<img src="showimg.asp?IMAGE=654632" border="0">

This way, even when viewing the source, the image path isn't revieled. If you know a way to get around this, I'm really interested in your ideas!

Anyways...something to think about...

. necronom .

Cool site Necronom and works well and a interesting solution.

Thankz

I am getting lost of positive feed back hear that is helping me create a solution to the problem in hand. I would like to thank you all for your advice and involvement and hop to implement some of the point made when I have time to update my site.

A big thank you to you all and I will still be Interested if you have more comments on this.

I've seen the layers and java solution to! That works quite well, but you'll have to have Java. Anyway, you could add a watermark to your picture, or ofcourse that annoying text. Splitting it is also nice, but just visually messing the picture up is better.

Actually, you'd be better of not displaying any picture at all..

I wonder if you could arrange layers or divs with multiple pics with only one displayed but when people right-click to save, a different picture is saved - perhaps something like the pics at that tit site  

Something like a mouse over replacement...  

Or, this is my favorite, create a HTML picture! Yes, I've made it up, but it works.

It works like this:

 - Create a table with the picture dimensions
 - Fill the table with rows and collums of 1px
 - Change the background color mathing the pixel on the picture

I've made a program which does this, Copyright 2003 Floris den Heijer All rights reserved, but it's just like a bitmap, except in HTML.

I can't paste HTML here, and work is still in progress, but yes, I'll let you know if I have something good.

BTW, this is basicly creating a bitmap in HTML, which is even bigger, so it will take quite a while using 56.6 k =D

Diep-Vriezer wrote: I can't paste HTML here, and work is still in progress, but yes, I'll let you know if I have something good. BTW, this is basicly creating a bitmap in HTML, which is even bigger, so it will take quite a while using 56.6 k =D

Interesting bit of thinking. I would like to see how this one turns out!

this should make the pics HUGE!

I think that you can frustate 99% of the users with simple things like they have described here. Not many people actually nows what to look at if they see your source... not many people see their cache for downloaded pics... if you split your pics, use them as background with a transparent gif above it... you will be safe from most of people.

The other 1% of users will be good enough to always find a way to copy it (print screen or other).

Now... another question... I found out that many kids where copying some of my site content and pasting in their homework... I understande their reasons (I was a kid once) but at least when I did that I had to actually read the enciclopedia and write it by hand in my homework... thus some of that was actually downloaded somewhere in my brains...

Since the kids are not even reading I want to make their lifes a little harder. I want that they still be able to copy and paste... but what I would love is that in the middle of the text I wrote a sentence like (Dear teacher, if you are reading this is because your student copy and paste this text without even read since he didnt saw this, visit the site: www.... and check it out) bundled in the midle of the text.

I think they would at least read it the next time... do you think this is possible?

Besides, a transparent GIF file only allows one file to be marked as transparent. Not really smart I guess.

EDIT:  PNG allows multiple colors to be marked as transparent BTW

I think I will have to work on the point that most don’t know about the code running in the back of browses. Until I find software to speed up updating and protecting photos I will have to use the some of the suggestions provided here that don’t need loads of work to implement. That is unless someone knows of software that can auto make code and pages with protection for the photos.

Still I will keep looking hear at your comments all are good and help full, Thank you all

I was monkeying around with the OPACITY property in VS.NET on a form, and needed to take a screenshot of my proggie. Anyways, I couldn't get a shot (Hypersnap) so I changed the opacity back to 100%.

You may be able to try that to prevent screen dumps. Not sure, but it worked against Hypersnap with a program (not webpage).

Just an FYI type idea...

Yeah, the opacity thing changes those things, but 3rd party screenshot prog's might work better.

Anyway, you can't set opacity on a web page (so much possibilities, and 'they' didn't included that..), so that won't work for this problem.

This problem seams to have you all running around in a loop without end. This one got me doing the same thing. The shortest solution is always the best, I was told but not with this problem. All good and interesting points but without resolve. Still there is always more thinking time on this one but can this forum take it?

If you want to put it simple, in theory there is no possible way to stop the client from retrieving the image.

You have to display the thing, right? That's the use of images. Use a watermark and a copyright. Altough there are 24.000.000.000 images out there, so the whole concept of securing images might be unimportant.

Adam from BodyMod.org wrote: Okay..after reading TONS of threads on boards all over the place on how to keep people from stealing your images, I've decided to start my own here. There's a little twist to it though. I've begun a project which has been labeled "GetThePic" and it's currently ver 1.0 (obviously). Anyways, the deal is that this is my best effort at keeping someone from stealing an image off a web site (which you all know I need to be able to do). So your task is to try to figure out how to get it, and then deface it, and either email it to me, or post it here (proving that you got around the scripts). I don't expect this to be a guaranteed 100% protected image, and I never will (because of the way the net works right now), but I will say that I've made it damn hard for Joe Blow to steal my sh*t Oh yeah, and if you do crack it all, make sure you post how you got around it so that we can continue to improve the scripts! Here's the link: http://www.bodymod.org/GetThePic/ - http://www.BodyMod.org/GetThePic/ Have fun! .: Adam

The above is from my site BodyMod.org. I figured that y'all would want to get in on this one .

. necronom .

v1.0 is done  ... save page for offline viewing. dammit...didn't think of that one.

.: Adam

sorry, i didn't read the 6 pages... so may be someone already answered you.

you can do this by converting the photos to FLASH,,,

sure you will not do this for every photo, but I have a Flash script that read images from the server and display it as a flash file.
it can read the photos as if they were flash file swf, so couldn't be save easily.

sorry again if this was repeated.

we are just trying making it more difficult... he can easily press Print Screen on his keyboard to capture any image he wants.

If it loads in the browser, the it isn't secure.

However, if a Java applet or an ActiveX control loads, then it may be possible to secure the image. e.g. If the browser window loses focus, blackout the image. And on any mousedown or keydown event, blackout the image.

BUT, even then you may have a situation where the user is running a virtual PC or virtual OS and you can't capture the mouse or key events. In that case, security is lost again because you can't know anything about the client because the client is a client of a larger client.

Examples would be "Virtual PC", PC Anywhere, and Terminal Services.

In order to overcome that problem, your Java or ActiveX control needs to be extremely intrusive into the client, and many people would consider it a violation of privacy and a serious security risk. The average user wouldn't know, but eventually the control would get bad press and reviews.

I'm not even sure that a control would run properly to protect against the virtual client scenario because of the massive degree to which you would need to "invade" the client. Built in security may prevent that.

Does this make sense to anyone?

pmormr wrote: this is hilarious... everytime i open up this thread and read the first line of your first post i always think it sayes... The First Post wrote: I have this pornography site...

Close!!!!!

Well, I am a flash designer, so the easyest way to protect ur images, is just import them in flash, infact, there are 10,000 of Flash Based Photogallery's Available, you dont need to "Import" that picture to flash if you dont know flash, Simply Load the picture form its Location

If you need any assistance in this matter, I am ready

zMaestro wrote: we are just trying making it more difficult... he can easily press Print Screen on his keyboard to capture any image he wants.

HUH! Then write this notice on ur site, Sorry users, We cant show the image on the screen, Perhaps you will have to imagin this, or just Leave my site bla bla bal

Click here to help about imaging an image, click here to close my site !!!

obviously, no script can stop the printscreen, javascripts  hardly control the browser? how are they gona control the the Print Screen Function ?

check this out. http://www.pscode.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=1156&lngWId=8 - http://www.pscode.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=1156 &lngWId=8

its in php.. i couldnt get it to work..

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ';' in C:\hshome\semikolo\semikolon-asp.com\image.php on line 1740

dont understand why, line 1740 is ?>..

still get the same error..

php is a screwed language....................

neotrix wrote: obviously, no script can stop the printscreen, javascripts  hardly control the browser? how are they gona control the the Print Screen Function ?

Nope, it can't disable the print function. But it CAN control the clipboard (location of the printscreen bitmap).

no one is every gona press PRINT SCREEn to save images

that's useless...

but here is something that may also help

import images to flash, or just use the flash external image loader thing... and protect ur movie from downlading

Try Downloading This File http://www.zonesoft.com.pk/swf/ - http://www.zonesoft.com.pk/swf/ and tell me if any of you guys downloaded it... perhaps you can, but its really very diffictult for an rodinary guy to do it

i entered http://www.zonesoft.com/pk/swf/ - http://www.zonesoft.com/pk/swf/ in getright browser, downloaded the php file and renamed it to swf.. quick and easy..