how can I protect my articles?

[SandiF]

What is the best way to protect your writing/articles/newsletters on the internet?

I do not think a copyright(c) is sufficient.. I'm looking for a way to prevent people from blatantly copy/pasting my articles. Is there some preventative ways to get this done?
Please help, it is a long time I have not done java and php programming and behind times but I think maybe some nice little script may be the solution. I know it's do-able...

[kia027]

Re: how can I protect my articles?

I am not sure if u can. once it is out there it is out there but by copyrighting you do have the right to go after someone who chooses to violate said copyright.

[LinSkinny]

Re: how can I protect my articles?

Having been around PCs since their inception, the bad news is that you really can't. You can print the articles to PDFs and lock down the PDF, but just like anything, if someone wants the data bad enough, they're going to get it. Anything you can protect with a password, there are utilities out there to break it. Even if you were to use your (or someone else's) programming skills to block right click, or copy on the website, there are screen capture tools that will take that webpage and convert it to a word document, with 100% accuracy.

If you put a copyright on the article, with warning that it cannot be re-distributed, the distribution is often still done often under the fair use clause. So let's say you have a copyright violation, and you decide to go after someone, you have to determine if the money <span style="font-style: italic">you</span> spend in court is worth your time, aggravation and expense. Suggest searching on <span style="font-weight: bold">copyright violations</span> for more information. Some of the stories and articles are pretty intriguing.

What I've seen some website's do is put in a watermark in the article, so if you use a screen capture tool, the watermark is captured, or they add some other stuff to the page, so the screen capture tools get a bad copy and the person has to do a lot of work to clean up the article. Look at at any major photo site. That's how it's done. In today's society, people are used to instant access to anything. Yes, you can succeed with getting through the violation process, but again, is it worth your time aggravation and expense? Only you can decide.

[LinSkinny]

Re: how can I protect my articles?

Just thought of something else. You could use flash like a lot of websites are using now to display music or video. But again, if you can make a flash file, somebody can make the opposite of it even if it's locked down. The different between a flash file and a regular web page is that the person wanting the flash data has to work a teeny bit more for it than just cutting and pasting.

If you've ever looked at 'page source' for a webpage, some are better than others. Active Server pages seem to hide stuff better than regular webpages, because you will not be able to see where it gets the flash file from. Other pages are not so secure. You can see the actual link to the flash file and download the file directly from the link.

[SandiF]

Re: how can I protect my articles?

Thanks Lin and Kia
I'll keep the copyright and make some terms that refer to the site as owner of the information posted.

[Gen]

Re: how can I protect my articles?

i could swear I was on a site/blog and when I tried to right click and copy, nothing happened

am talking about text. I remember looking like this