Content thieves – we all hate them. One of the things we bloggers hate the most is other people copying our contents, especially our images, and posting them like they’re their own. Being familiar with coding and photo editing software, I know there are a hundred ways for other people to get what they want from your blog even if you have installed plug-ins or scripts to disable this and that.
Don’t worry, I won’t be sharing HOW one can steal your contents. This post is actually about some ways you can make it more difficult for others to do so. Yes, HARDER, not impossible ‘cause, again, there are ways, really. (Okay, I need to stop before I eventually give in and tell you how else you can take someone’s contents. :D)
Ways to Ward Off Content Thieves
Most content thieves would easily give up when you make it harder for them to steal your images and texts. So, here are some of the ways I’ve tried myself to cause them more hassle than the usual:
Watermark Away!
It may be troublesome placing watermarks on your images, but it does fend off those who’s in the business of stealing photos. Again, they can still cut or crop your watermarks out of the picture, but some are too lazy to edit so they choose those that don’t have any.
Most of the people I know use Photoscape for their batch watermarking needs (it’s also great for quick photo edits). I personally use Visual Watermark. It’s not free though, but I won the license from a giveaway so I’m using that.
For small number of photos, especially when I want to place the watermark somewhere else other than the lower left or right of the photos, I use Adobe Photoshop.
Disable Highlighting of Text
Did you know that people can steal your content by simply highlighting and copy-pasting them on Windows Live Writer or even their online blog post editor? Yes, including your images and they even end up leeching your bandwidth!
Leeching – Direct hotlinking of images or files uploaded to your own server by others. Also referred to as offsite image grabs or piggy-backing where the content owner’s bandwidth is stolen as well.
I haven’t personally used any script on Blogger for disabling highlighting of text so I can’t recommend anything for now. But, you can check out these search results. I may update this post with a recommended script.
For WordPress, I use the same plug-in as for disabling right-clicking. See below.
Use Scripts or Plug-ins That Disable Right-clicking.
Why disable right-clicking? This is to prevent others from right-clicking your images and saving them on their computers. It also stops others from finding out where your images are hosted so they can’t leech your bandwidth by simply getting the image location or link.
For WordPress, I use the plug-in WP-CopyProtect. What I like about it is it can disable highlighting of text too. Plus, it gives you the option to use a popup message to notify your reader that right-clicking is disabled. Here’s the plug-in’s settings page:
!IMPORTANT NOTE!
There’s actually a loophole in Google Chrome for content thieves to steal your contents when you have the popup message enabled.
When they continually right-click on your blog, they will eventually get this message:
When they check that box and click on OK, they can continue on your blog and right-click away. So, my tip is to not show any notification message anymore. Most of our readers now anyway are smart enough to realize that you disabled highlighting and right-clicking on your site… well, after a couple of attempts. 😀
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