Why Disable Right Click?
Theft of content from websites is a big problem, the first prevention method that pops into peoples minds seems to be to disable the right click function on the website. All this script really does is inform anyone who tries to right click that the content is copyrighted, which might stop a small minority of users but not the vast majority of those looking to steal the content. The script itself cannot actually stop people from taking whatever they want to from a site as there are a lot of ways to get around it, however it does take away from the usability of the site, in most cases can look unprofessional and it shouldn’t be seen as a theft prevention method.
With this rant I plan on looking at a few of the ways around these scripts, what it takes away from the user and a few alternative methods that could be used instead. Hopefully this will show that disabling the right click menu doesn’t help with content theft and that it does a site a lot of harm for no real reason at all.
There are ways around it
By disabling the right click menu within your site the impression that you are giving every user that visits the site is that you don’t trust any of them. Your intention might be to stop theft on your site, but really you are punishing the innocent while those that really want to take your content will simply find another way to get what they want. Here are just a few ways that they can easily get around this script:
It’s Javascript
The quickest of all the ways to get around the disable right click script is for JavaScript to be disabled from within the browser. This will make the script useless and all right clicking functionality is restored on your site.
Print-screen
If it is the images that the thief wants, the print-screen or screen-grab functions that are built into the OS will help with this. By simply pressing print screen, opening an image editor and copying they have your image.
File > Save As
Saving a page is easy; simply go to file and save as, this way the html and any images that are called within that page will be saved directly to the user’s computer ready for their use.
Copy and Paste
If it is the text that they are interested in, they can highlight the text and either use a keyboard shortcut or go to the edit menu in a browser to copy the text, this can then be pasted anywhere the user wishes to place it.
Temporary Internet Folder
Websites are downloaded onto the users computer and held within a temporary internet folder, this is done so that if the user comes back to the site or the images are used within a different page the load time can be quicker, this is known as a cache. Should the user know where these files are saved they can easily get the images, or any other files that download to their computer, they wish to have directly from this folder.
View Source Code
This method can be used for both text and images, simply use the browser’s keyboard shortcut or the menu at the top of it to view the pages source code, from there they can find the images location, or copy and paste the text they wish to use.
Download Entire Site
There are many tools on the internet that allow a user to download an entire site, so all your pages, images, scripts, videos can be quickly downloaded and used by anyone, regardless of you using a disable right click script or not.
Browser Compatibility
Lastly there is also the issue of browser compatibility, the large majority of these scripts only work on a couple of browsers, meaning that there is a good chance that even with the script enabled it might not work on the browser that the visitor is using.
Some of these might be stating the obvious, but the above were simply reminders that there are more ways then just the right click menu to steal content from a site and that some of them are just as easy to do as pressing the right mouse button.
What right click can be used for
Poor usability on a site will drive your visitors away. You may think that all you are doing by disabling right clicking is stopping those that want to steal from your site, but you’re also stopping a lot of functions that allow users to easily navigate through your site. So to stop the few, you are punishing the masses and making your site less user friendly. Here are a few examples of functions that can be carried out by right clicking on a site:
Open in New Window or Tab
This is something that is drilled into a lot of people, to open a link in a new window hover over the link, right click and open in new.
Go Back, Forward and Reload
Yes these are normally at the top of the browser within a menu, but some users like to use the right click menu for these function.
Book Mark The Page
A lot of browsers allow users to right click to bookmark a page, so by stopping them doing this you could of just lost yourself a valuable client, customer or visitor of your site.
Search this…
Some browsers have a function within the right click menu that allows users to highlight a section of your text and search for that term within a search engine. This is quite useful for quick searching of a topic that might be interesting to them, so that they can quickly preform a search based on your content.
Quoting
Not everyone who wants to copy your text wants to steal it, you may of written something interesting and to help back up their point they wish to quote something from your site and credit you for it. By disabling right click you may have just lost a valuable backlink and new traffic to your site.
The Alternatives
There are a few alternatives to disabling the right click menu, here are a few ideas:
Trust
Ok not the greatest, but trust that the majority of users will respect your site enough not to steal from it andyou will never fully be able to stop those that do, but punishing those that are simply visiting your site doesn’t seem like a great solution to the problem. Using such sites as copyscape will help you track down plagiarism and naming images uniquely could help you in searching for those that are using your images without permission.
Watermark images
Placing a visible watermark on an image can stop people from stealing them, and those that do will then be crediting you for your work so you could end up getting some more traffic.
Digital watermark
A digital watermark is a hidden watermark that embeds information within the image file itself. This work a little better than a visible watermark as it is not obvious at first glance, so won’t spoil the image. It may not stop someone from stealing the image, but it will make it easier to find and prove that it is yours.
Disable Right click on images only
If you still feel that disabling right click is the way to go then why not use a script that will just stop right click on an image, or one that will simply remove the save image option from within it. The down side to this is like with most of these scripts that disable the right mouse click, they only work on some browsers.
Don’t place it on the internet
Stopping people from stealing your work on the internet is a losing battle, the only true way to win is to not place it on the internet at all, although this is probably not really an option for most people. However hopefully this article has shown that adding these types of scripts will take away from the usability of your site, while not actually doing anything productive to stop those who want to use the content without permission, they are simply a false sense of security.
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Comments
Well put Dizi
Cracking article!
I’ll have to show this to some of my clients when they insist that right click is the only way to stop their images from being downloaded. Nice argument Diz
amazing article!!
Its frustrating when sites disable right click, the only advantage of disabling the right click is people can’t copy your content with traditional method of a right click, it doesn’t stop people from using other methods if they really want it.