Preventing a Website from Being Copied

[whitesmith]

Hello,

I'm in the process of putting up a website -- my first. There's a
number of tools (like WinHTTrack) that allow an entire site to be
copied to someone's hard drive to be examined at their leisure. Does
anyone know of a method to prevent tools like this from working? I
want people to visit my site, but I also want the stuff that's under
the hood to stay under the hood.

My thanks for all helpful answers.

[Jeremy]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

whitesmith wrote:

Hello,
>
I'm in the process of putting up a website -- my first. There's a
number of tools (like WinHTTrack) that allow an entire site to be
copied to someone's hard drive to be examined at their leisure. Does
anyone know of a method to prevent tools like this from working? I
want people to visit my site, but I also want the stuff that's under
the hood to stay under the hood.
>
My thanks for all helpful answers.

Can't be done. If people want to save your content, they can and will.
Keep your content fresh, and people will keep coming back.

[Joost Diepenmaat]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

whitesmith <apasserby@hush mail.comwrites:

Hello,
>
I'm in the process of putting up a website -- my first. There's a
number of tools (like WinHTTrack) that allow an entire site to be
copied to someone's hard drive to be examined at their leisure. Does
anyone know of a method to prevent tools like this from working?

This is inherently impossible for a public website.

I want people to visit my site, but I also want the stuff that's under
the hood to stay under the hood.

You may be seriously overestimating the amount of interest people will
have in your javascript/html/css. Especially if it's your first.

Don't worry about it.

My thanks for all helpful answers.

Cheers,

Joost.

--
Joost Diepenmaat | blog: http://joost.zeekat.nl/ | work: http://zeekat.nl/

[David E. Ross]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

On 6/10/2008 11:34 AM, whitesmith wrote:

Hello,
>
I'm in the process of putting up a website -- my first. There's a
number of tools (like WinHTTrack) that allow an entire site to be
copied to someone's hard drive to be examined at their leisure. Does
anyone know of a method to prevent tools like this from working? I
want people to visit my site, but I also want the stuff that's under
the hood to stay under the hood.
>
My thanks for all helpful answers.

If you are in the U.S. or certain other nations, put a copyright notice
on each page. In the U.S., there is an implied copyright; but an
explicit notice is better.

You must then exert the effort to locate violations of your copyright
and enforce it. This is generally done only for commercial use of your
work since there is a right of fair use for limited non-commercial use.

See my <http://www.rossde.com/copyright.html> .

--
David Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Have you been using Netscape and now feel abandoned by AOL?
Then use SeaMonkey. Go to <http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

Scripsit David E. Ross:

If you are in the U.S. or certain other nations, put a copyright
notice on each page. In the U.S., there is an implied copyright; but
an explicit notice is better.

An explicit notice adds nothing to copyright. In copyrightially
underdeveloped countries, _registration_ of copyright, at the applicable
office, may yield some additional rights in actions against offences.

You must then exert the effort to locate violations of your copyright
and enforce it.

If you like, you can try to do such things.

This is generally done only for commercial use of
your work since there is a right of fair use for limited
non-commercial use.

"Fair use" depends on culture, legislation, and interpretation. Even the
phrase "fair use" is basically an Americanism; in the EU, for example,
limitations to copyright are, in principle at least, based on specific
clauses in legislation.

Typically, when people ask, more or less clueslessly, how to protect
their web site from being copied, they actually mean the _design_ of the
site. In such situations, it is quite probable that the design isn't
protected by copyright (i.e. is not a "work" in the copyright sense),
and quite certain that it's not worth copying, though this does not
always prevent it from being copied.

Of course, this has nothing to do with HTML, but neither has the
original question. The whole thread is clearly off-topic, so we can let
it die, or we could continue this little chat.

Spectators need to be warned that there are probably only two people in
the world who really know and understand copyright in the worldwide
context, neither of them is participating this discussion, and they
disagree on pretty much everything.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Andy Dingley]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

On 11 Jun, 09:33, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

Spectators need to be warned that there are probably only two people in
the world who really know and understand copyright in the worldwide
context, neither of them is participating this discussion, and they
disagree on pretty much everything.

Who might they be, and have they published anything readable?

(Lessig?)

[David Stone]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

In article
<41a14ede-1f23-4106-a650-096d9009caee@c5 8g2000hsc.googl egroups.com>,
Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesm iths.comwrote:

On 11 Jun, 09:33, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tu t.fiwrote:
>

Spectators need to be warned that there are probably only two people in
the world who really know and understand copyright in the worldwide
context, neither of them is participating this discussion, and they
disagree on pretty much everything.

>
Who might they be, and have they published anything readable?

I think he's riffing on the famous line about thermodynamics, in
which one Prof claims there are only two people in the world who
really understand it, and the other one... Well, you know.

Ironic humour aside, one of the most helpful articles about
copyright I've ever run across is the US Library of Congress/
Copyright Office copyright FAQ. Link temporarily misplaced,
but I'm sure you can find it!

[Ed Mullen]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

David Stone wrote:

In article
<41a14ede-1f23-4106-a650-096d9009caee@c5 8g2000hsc.googl egroups.com>,
Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesm iths.comwrote:
>

>On 11 Jun, 09:33, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tu t.fiwrote:
>>

>>Spectators need to be warned that there are probably only two people in
>>the world who really know and understand copyright in the worldwide
>>context, neither of them is participating this discussion, and they
>>disagree on pretty much everything.

>Who might they be, and have they published anything readable?

>
I think he's riffing on the famous line about thermodynamics, in
which one Prof claims there are only two people in the world who
really understand it, and the other one... Well, you know.
>
Ironic humour aside, one of the most helpful articles about
copyright I've ever run across is the US Library of Congress/
Copyright Office copyright FAQ. Link temporarily misplaced,
but I'm sure you can find it!

Here's one:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html

--
Ed Mullen

http://edmullen.net

Why do you always turn down your radio when looking for an address?

[VisualVision]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

I'm in the process of putting up a website -- my first. There's a

number of tools (like WinHTTrack) that allow an entire site to be
copied to someone's hard drive to be examined at their leisure. Does
anyone know of a method to prevent tools like this from working? I
want people to visit my site, but I also want the stuff that's under
the hood to stay under the hood.
>

a web site is something public, and the web has been designed to share
info (not to protect) so there is not a valid way to protect it. But if
there is some content you really want to protect, you can pack it as
ebook, with a tool that provides encryption and secure protection, e.g.
with ebookswriter.



--

ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤ º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º° `°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`° º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ ø,¸
http://www.HyperPublish.com Catalogs, CD and sites with 1 tool
http://www.EasyWebEditor.com Create a nice Web site with ease
http://www.1site.info A professional Website quickly
http://www.EBooksWriter.com Discover the artist inside you!
http://www.PaperKiller.com Manuals, HTMLHelp, CHM quickly
http://www.CdFrontEnd.com Create autorun CD presentations

Visual Vision - http://visualvision.com http://visualvision.it
leader in hypertext authoring [ASP members, ESC members]

[Stan Brown]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:55:00 -0700 from David E. Ross
<nobody@nowhere .not>:

You must then exert the effort to locate violations of your copyright
and enforce it. This is generally done only for commercial use of your
work since there is a right of fair use for limited non-commercial use.

Sorry, but that's just wrong. Whether the use is commercial or non-
commercial has *nothing* to do with whether it is an infringement,
though it may have something to do with the amount of damages if it
is an infringement.

You need to read Brad Templeton's Copyright Myths.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you

[Stan Brown]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:15:15 -0400 from David Stone
<no.email@domai n.invalid>:

I think he's riffing on the famous line about thermodynamics, in
which one Prof claims there are only two people in the world who
really understand it, and the other one... Well, you know.

Not thermodynamics, but general relativity, if I recall correctly.

And *that* was an adaptation of ?Gladstone's famous statement about
the Schleswig-Holstein question of the 1840s through 1860s: that only
three people understood it: one was dead, one had gone mad, and the
third was himself.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you

[Andy Dingley]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

On 12 Jun, 03:10, Stan Brown <the_stan_br... @fastmail.fmwro te:

And *that* was an adaptation of ?Gladstone's famous statement about
the Schleswig-Holstein question of the 1840s through 1860s: that only
three people understood it: one was dead, one had gone mad, and the
third was himself.

In addition, AFAIR that quotation wasn't especially famous until it
was repeated in a Sherlock Holmes story (I think Mycroft was claimed
to be the only one who understood it).

[David E. Ross]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

On 6/11/2008 7:09 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:55:00 -0700 from David E. Ross
<nobody@nowhere .not>:

>You must then exert the effort to locate violations of your copyright
>and enforce it. This is generally done only for commercial use of your
>work since there is a right of fair use for limited non-commercial use.

>
Sorry, but that's just wrong. Whether the use is commercial or non-
commercial has *nothing* to do with whether it is an infringement,
though it may have something to do with the amount of damages if it
is an infringement.
>
You need to read Brad Templeton's Copyright Myths.
>

Yes, infringement is infringement whether it's commercial or
non-commercial. However, the effort to enforce a copyright is generally
expended only where monetary damages can be determined, which most often
involves commercial infringement.

Note that file-sharing of music, by reducing the sales of CDs, is indeed
a form of commercial infringement. In this case, someone obtains a copy
for free when it would have otherwise be purchased.

--
David Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Have you been using Netscape and now feel abandoned by AOL?
Then use SeaMonkey. Go to <http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

Andy Dingley wrote:

On 11 Jun, 09:33, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tu t.fiwrote:
>

>Spectators need to be warned that there are probably only two people in
>the world who really know and understand copyright in the worldwide
>context, neither of them is participating this discussion, and they
>disagree on pretty much everything.

>
Who might they be, and have they published anything readable?
>
(Lessig?)

If Larry's one of the two Jukka had in mind (though I, like David,
assumed he was speaking in metaphor, and not of two actual
individuals), then we can safely decrement the number - unless we mean
something rather unusual by "know and understand" in this context.

I have a friend who is a lawyer and rhetorician, who has studied
various questions of "online" intellectual property at length (and
presented and published on them), and I believe she would agree that
the situation is, indeed, unclear.

In short: it is not technically possible to "protect" content that is
made public; it is not legally possible to "protect" many aspects of
it (and largely impractical to enforce what legal protections do
exist); and most people don't care, and neither should the OP.

--
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Preventing a Website from Being Copied

VisualVision wrote:

>
But if
there is some content you really want to protect, you can pack it as
ebook, with a tool that provides encryption and secure protection, e.g.
with ebookswriter.

And if someone cares enough to steal it, they'll just scrape the text
off the screen, OCR'ing it if necessary. Or record it as they read it
with screen-capture software. Or read it aloud into dictation software.

There is no such thing as "secure protection" of information that you
hand to remote users. You cannot give someone data and then take it back.

You can make things less convenient for users who will do things you
don't want them to do, but usually at the cost of making them less
convenient for the users who will use it as you intend, and for
yourself as well. And, frankly, it's unlikely that J Random Author
will produce content of such transcendent greatness that anyone will
really care, so all you're probably doing is losing part of your audience.

If you don't want people to learn your tricks, take up stage magic.

--
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University