This may be out of the hosting subject but I hope someone can help me out.

I have a web directory by city for a particular industry and I spend alot of time organizing and collecting logos short description and link them to their site.
I have noticed in my log files that several people have downloaded all of my image files. How can I keep this from happening?

John

We recently tackled this for a client. There are a number of ways to make life harder for people who steal your images, but to be honest it is impossible to prevent it completely. Why? Because when all else fails there is always the good old fashioned screen grab and paste into graphics app to resort to.

Perhaps the most simple solution is to use JavaScript to prevent right clicking on images followed by "Save image as." This is easily circumvented by disabling JavaScript though.

What we did for our client was to place all images in a directory above the web site root, making them inaccessible directly from the web. We then used server side scripting to binary read the images and binary write them to the response stream. Users wanting to right click and save images were presented with a nice gif that displayed a copyright notice!

An enhancement to the above is to place the images in a database and read them from there.

Yeah, I have added the javascript error message, but as you said they are accessing and downloading just the images. I'm going to have to tackle this before posting the site once again because the theives are getting off easy!

You are going to have to put the images somewhere that is not directly accessible from the web. Unfortunately this means that you will require a script or component to take care of the reading of the image files and then sending them to clients as a binary stream.

Without knowing anything about your platform I cannot advise further and I really need to get some sleep! (It is 05:20 here)

The above method is actually a good idea but if it can be viewed from the web it can be stolen as you have mentioned!! All one has to do is go to their temp internet folder and everything you viewed is there. All that would have to be done is move it out of that folder into one that doesnt parse after a period of time and you have the image regardless how you try to protect it. I do like your method of binary. That is a very good idea for the simple save as or right clickers.

You may want to look into digital watermarks, they have been mentioned here in the past try doing a search, maybe something will turn up that you may find useful.

Here is my thoughts...
Either adding seperate image folders for each city. This will still allow them access but makes it more difficult.

Or, creating a javascript that wll access the images from another location.. But, this would take alot of work.....

What do ya think... Just want to make it as hard as possible.


John

It's an old topic for sure - basically, if it's in that temporary internet files folder, it's theirs.

Short of using watermarking technology, your game is over :eek:


Lats...

JavaScript is too weak a solution, IMHO.

Some have resorted to employing Flash or even Java Applets in a bid to prevent image theft. The images are displayed through the Flash movie or Java applet and thus are never right clickable and never get into the client's temp folder in native format. I suppose it all depends on how far you want to or are able to go.

The bottom line is that even if you can keep image files out of the temporary internet files folder, the determined few will still get them. Like I said, screen grab and paste always works!

Actually the .swf file is also stored there in the temp folder and with all the scripts available that can deprotect a flash file that again is sort of pointless. It's an unfortunate problem and the only real solution is to watermark them either physically (which can be modified if they know what they are doing but usually end up with a lesser quality pic) or digitally which is very difficult to avoid and get rid of. As mentioned above if it is viewable from the internet it is theirs for the taking. It's sad but it is also reality
:(