We have an active community based on SMF 1.1.8 with more than 13000 registered members and more than 50000 guests and a page visit of more than 1,000,000
We have many creations, articles which are the sole creation of the members, but We are facing a serious problem that needs instant look into.
Problem: Many persons just copy the articles in our forum and paste it in other forums and earn reputation there. We need to protect the forum urgently as it may reduce hopes of our members over privacy.
I tried the Disable Right Click mod. But the main thing is the Ctrl-C and
I need to disable use of this key on my forum.
ie) once the member/guest starts the forum [right from the index.php] whatever page he opens, the Ctrl-c should not work. Even in replies or quoting the Ctrl-C should not work..
Please give idea/mod before my members create chaos.. Please
Thanks in advance
There is no 100% sure way to stop copying your content. If nothing else, people will always be able to take screenshots.
screen shot is not a problem for me
I understand that if a thing comes to net, then its public.
But i want to know how to disable Ctrl-C key.
As long as you handle text, there is no reliable way to do that.
cant we modify the Php or add javascript so that the Ctrl-C can be blocked..
I saw in the "Disable Right click mod" the script was modified to disable right click. [http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=238198.0] like that cant we do for this..
You could ask the mod author about modifying the mod.
I've searched around and I don't think this is possible.
Or can we disable the Control key alone.....
Please friends bcos this issue is attacking our forum more than the spam bots..
How bout restricting access to your forum?
I already mentioned dear
Quote13000 registered members and more than 50000 guests
so i cant restrict access and also i cant manually check the login history of all these five digit count heads to find who is copying.
Thats y i am adamant on disabling that copy key..
There is always a way to steal the content...
Highlight + ctr +c is just one way. Right click menu is just one way.
How about source code? How bout browser functions? How bout screenshots and imagereader?
XFactor , I've found a way to disable selection of text in Internet Explorer.
I could not get it to work with Firefox and haven't tried any other browser, but here it is:
Index.template.php, find:
<body>
Replace with:
<body ondragstart="return
<Nas> false" onselectstart="return false">
I found several other methods to prevent copying as well, but they only work in Internet Explorer.
There is is no foolproof way to prevent it.
Any javascript blocks can be easily defeated by using a different browser OR temporarily disabling javascript.
OR They could also view the page source, and copy and paste from that.
OR they could write a script to grab and copy the content.
and many many other ways of defeating it.
I just thought of a very evil way to restrict copy and pasting... randomly inserting hidden text in between the real text. Using your original post as an example...
W<span style="display: none">ewfhwer293nfssd</span>e have an acti<span style="display: none">asd3rihuwidsfsdkjf</span>ve communi<span style="display: none">sd4u4554ygdfxc</span>ty based on S<span style="display: none">3454564568nhfg</span>MF 1.1.8 with more than 13000 registered members and more than 50000 guests and a page visit of more than 1,000,000
We have many cre<span style="display: none">Azxocijm ,weo0032am</span>ations, articles which are the sole creation of the members, but We are facing a serious pr<span style="display: none">sdf445hnntyhr5werer</span>oblem that needs instant look into.
Problem: Many pers<span style="display: none">sdfsdfsdfsdfshne</span>ons just copy the articles in our forum and paste it in other forums and earn rep<span style="display: none">dfgdgregerggeererq</span>utation there. We need to protect the forum urgently as it may reduce hopes of our members over privacy.
I tried the Disable Right Click mod. But the main thing is the Ctrl-C and
I need to disable use of this key on my forum.
ie) once the member/g<span style="display: none">wefsdf bdfbfberger</span>uest starts the forum [right from the index.php] whatever page he opens, the Ctrl-c should not work. Even in replies or quoting the Ctrl-C sho<span style="display: none">weffwewef32r323</span>uld not work..
Please give idea/mod before my members create chaos.. Please
Thanks in adv<span style="display: none">sdf34tghnr5ynjty</span>ance
That way, it's still visible normally, but when you copy and paste, the garbage text appears. Plus, I'm sure it's possible to automate it...
EDIT: It would probably hurt your search engine ratings though. A workaround would be to change the garbage text into keywords for your web site -- a win-win situation.
EDIT2: I just tested it. This technique would work in Internet Explorer and Firefox, but not Google Chrome, Safari, or Opera.
Indeed, I would expect it to result in negative seo.
(this is why that technique isn't widely employed)
I've seen a few people do it with a links eg "copyright - mysite.com - no copying"
If the content is indeed private as XFactor claims (i assume boards hidden to guests), then it wouldn't be accessible to search engines in the first place. In this case, heavyccasey's idea sounds like a good shot on discouraging copy/pastes.
just me idea to share
about the search engine, you can do the submission in a different way (I don't know, maybe redirect all the engine and spider to a clone forum that users can't access) the clone forum is for search engine purpose only
for the users:
if they have javascript disable, then try this:
- first message is pulled from database, and encrypted by smf (you can make a mod for this)
- since they don't have javascript to decrypt it, all they will see is scrambled stuff
they need to have javascript enable
the javascript will decrypt the message and see it (browser decrypt) but now since the javascript enabled, you can use it to disable right click and Ctrl-C.
If they try to look in the source, all they will see is encrypted messages, so they can't copy anyway
by the way, this is the way that most emails are displayed on websites, :D
I guess that helps ::) kind of complicated though >:(
but still that can't prevent taking screenshot of the screen :(
Quote from: akaiphan on April 21, 2009, 12:40:47 PM
about the search engine, you can do the submission in a different way (I don't know, maybe redirect all the engine and spider to a clone forum that users can't access) the clone forum is for search engine purpose only
That will likely be considered cloaking, and will get you quickly removed from search engine indexes. The other downfall is that users can spoof the user agent and get the unprotected "spider" version.
Quote from: akaiphan on April 21, 2009, 12:40:47 PM
if they have javascript disable, then try this:
- first message is pulled from database, and encrypted by smf (you can make a mod for this)
- since they don't have javascript to decrypt it, all they will see is scrambled stuff
they need to have javascript enable
the javascript will decrypt the message and see it (browser decrypt) but now since the javascript enabled, you can use it to disable right click and Ctrl-C.
That will hurt search engine rankings considerably, since you probably don't want to do any kind of cloaking like the above mention.
It's also fairly easy to work around if you really want the content.
Quote from: akaiphan on April 21, 2009, 12:40:47 PM
but still that can't prevent taking screenshot of the screen :(
Exactly. You don't have control over the device on the end of the connection, so you can't easily prevent stuff from being copied. Anything you do to make it more difficult on the regular users won't really stop those determined, but it will impact the innocent users you want to keep.
By the way, in Firefox, it's really easy to prevent the context menu from being disabled. There is actually a setting to remove the ability of JavaScript to disable or replace the context menu.
If you do your homework, which quite possibly involves working with a lawyer, you should be able to create a TOS (Terms of Use) about your content.
Maybe using Copyscape (http://www.copyscape.com/) and reporting plagiarism to the admins of other forums/sites where the copied content is posted would be the way to go? If the admins of those other sites are not cooperative, you can complain to their hosting company.
I think that's not the way to solve all problems, since if there are a lot of people coming from tons of hosts. How can you inform them all? :-[
Printing the page to pdf does the trick too. You really can't prevent your content to be protected as long as it is public.
There's even "File>Print".
Also, if something is shown, on your monitor, it's on your hard disk, somewhere.
If people know how to access that, which most do, bang goes your copy-protection, anyway.
There is really no way to do this. I too have been a victim of people copying my work and claiming it as their own. Some of theis work too hours to produce, and many connections to get.
On your large scale forum, there is really nothing you can do. On a small forum, you could link text and use a MOD so that the link can't be viewed to guests.
Of course with any forum you can just click "Quote" and the post is put in quick reply or reply and easily copied from there.