Image protection with jQuery

[steveca0057]

My client is really concerned about thievery and what not concerning users stealing images from his site. I have come across a number of possible jQuery methods, the goal is to keep the basic user from right clicking and downloading content. Any help would be much appreciated. Cheers! – Steve

[TheDoc]

In some cases disabling right clicking can actually deter users from visiting the site again. I highly recommend against using this method.

Rob is right, definitely go with a simple watermark.

[karlpcrowley]

there are other ways to view the source and content other than right clicking the page
also if you watermark it could be as good for branding as it is as a deterrent

[Senff]

I’d say, instead of trying to find way to make it impossible/more difficult to steal images, try to find a way so that people don’t even want to steal the images in the first place.

Watermarking is the best way for that I think. That way, you sort of “damage” the image, and the watermark is part of the image (impossible to detach), no matter how someone will get it (taking a screenshot is another way).

The downside is that it indeed looks a little bit less perfect on your website, but that’s the price you’ll have to pay.

[Senff]

Thief can still just go peek in the source code and take real-image.jpg directly by going to the URL.

Embedding the watermark in the actual image would make it much less interesting to steal, methinks.

[Senff]

With an image and separate watermark, the thief can still go in the source code and download the actual image without the watermark.

Dividing the image into segments is quite a hassle to download and put back together, but it’s also a hassle to create (cutting it up and putting every segment on the site). And without a watermark over it, Mr. Thief can just take a screenshot and crop the image.

Having the watermark as part of the image, it’s impossible to separate the watermark from the image, so there’s no way to get a clean image — not by saving it, not by looking in the source code, not by taking a screenshot.

This is how stock photo companies do it, like iStockPhoto. If you look at any photo on their site, there’s really no way an image can be taken without having the company’s logo included in it (example: here). You’ll have to clean it up really well in Photoshop if you want the actual image.

[Brightonmike]

A watermark is the only way.

All other ways are easily overcome using snipping tool.

[Author]

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