non-selectable text

[ggggus]

I have a customer

http://www.fitnessrepairparts.com

that has spent a lot of time building item descriptions and lists of equipment that parts go on. Now they are having ebayers come and rip off their descriptions.

Is there any way to protect this information? or at least make it harder to copy and paste?

Obviously this information is important for search engine bots, so I don't want to hinder them in any way, but we would like to make it harder for others to rip off the info.

***************************************
J. Jacobs

http://www.piercedmedia.com

 

[trollacious]

This is an OLD question, with the same answer as always. If it's displayed on the Internet, someone can copy text and graphics. The only way to protect these things is not put them on the Internet.

Lee

 

[mbrooks]

But... if you are paranoid an really want to waste the time protecting what you can. Using CSS create an image that <span>'s the text you want to protect with a z-index of 10 and make it transparent.

M. Brooks

http://mbrooks.info

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

J,

All you would have to do is view the page source, and your hours of work "protecting" the text has gone in seconds.

Dan



Coedit Limited - Delivering standards compliant, accessible web solutions

[tt]Dan's Page [blue]@[/blue] Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/dan/

[/tt]

 

[okpeery]

Also the person could still type what you have on the page by looking at it. A fast typist can get it done rapidly and they didn't have to do the work of creating the descriptions. If someone had something to sell on ebay for which they needed a description, even typing it, as opposed to cutting and pasting, is faster than doing the research and compiling the descriptions themselves. I can't imagine you can effectively prevent this. Maybe you should try to get the ebay sellers to link to your page as a reference for which parts go with which machines.

 

[tsdragon]

You could look into a program that can convert text to graphics, and display only the graphic version. I think ImageMagick can do this. It won't prevent people from retyping the text, as okpeery said, but it will prevent cutting and pasting.

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[Vragabond]

And make your visitors hate your site because they'll have to wait for the images that are actually text to load.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

OCR software is pretty accurate these days - and it would be quicker than retyping the text (feed the image in, get the text out)...




Coedit Limited - Delivering standards compliant, accessible web solutions

[tt]Dan's Page [blue]@[/blue] Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/dan/

[/tt]

 

[trollacious]

Since he wants this as text because of search engine recognition, using a graphic would be counterproductive.

This seems to be more ego-related than anything, not wanting someone else to use descriptions of items that have been written by the client. I imagine an email to the "offending" parties who use the descriptions pointing out that copying from websites like that is copyright infringement and could result in a court case might help, but wouldn't hold my breath on it.

Lee

 

[okpeery]

In my gallery I often go to the website of the individual artist or designer whom we carry. I then write the copy that will accompany their page on our website or their picture in our monthly newsletter based on what they say about themselves. Then I infuse a bit of our design ideas/philosophy into the description. When I am finished I send it to them to approve. Essentially I use their text but then edit it to meet our needs.

I know you can't do that with ebay sellers but you could email them and say that you spent hours creating the descriptions and would appreciate that they don't violate copyright laws. Encourage them to make their descriptions a link to your site. Explain this would help you get more traffic on your site and save them the trouble of making descriptions. Finesse the plea but wrap it in a slightly threatening manner of copyright infringement. Make it sound like you are willing to work together but will not tolerate outright theft. You might get a few people to bite. If you explain why some might actually do it. Once I sold something on craigslist and I linked it to a website that had all the details. I got a thank you email from the web site owner.