L
Luc
how can I copy protect the text content of my webpage?
L
Luc
David Given said:
ok, but how can i disable the copy property on the users end when he tries
to copy plain text?
Z
Zif
Luc said:
You can't.
Whatever you publish on the web can be copied very easily. If you
don't want it copied, don't publish it.
There are scripts that attempt to disable or confuse browser features
like copy/paste or show source but they are a complete waste of time.
T
Tim Slattery
Luc said:
You don't. If it's displayed in a browser, the user has it. That user
can do anything with it he likes.
M
Matt Kruse
Zif said:
I wouldn't go that far.
On an internal webapp which is IE-only, I recently disabled copying of text
from within the browser.
It accomplishes two things:
1) Prevents most average users from copying the text, which solves a big
part of the problem.
2) Makes it more of a bother for advanced users to copy the text (which of
course is still possible), which makes it obvious to them that the text is
not meant to be copied, and if they do so they are breaking internal rules.
Some text is not meant to be copied. Preventing most users from easily doing
so is often beneficial.
R
Randy Webb
Luc said the following on 10/25/2005 8:18 AM:
Open your webpage file in a text editor.
Delete the text you want protected.
Save the file.
It is now copy protected.
Anything else will fail.
Open your webpage file in a text editor.
Delete the text you want protected.
Save the file.
It is now copy protected.
Anything else will fail.
T
The Magpie
You can't - don't even bother trying. This is covered extensively in theLuc said:
group FAQ. If you publish it, they will read it.
D
Dr John Stockton
JRS: In article <[email protected]>, dated
Tue, 25 Oct 2005 09:19:10, seen in Tim
Since you are .gov, ISTM that you could taken a broader view. That user
is able to copy the text, and can then treat it as any other text that
he had. But Copyright Law limits what the copier is permitted to do
with the material; he is not (with exceptions) free to re-publish the
creative work of others.
Tue, 25 Oct 2005 09:19:10, seen in Tim
Slattery said:
Since you are .gov, ISTM that you could taken a broader view. That user
is able to copy the text, and can then treat it as any other text that
he had. But Copyright Law limits what the copier is permitted to do
with the material; he is not (with exceptions) free to re-publish the
creative work of others.
R
Randy Webb
Dr John Stockton said the following on 10/26/2005 12:11 PM:
And all it takes to make it not fall under the copywrite is to change it
around a little, reword it a little, and maybe even change a few words.
With code, it is even harder as it is nearly impossible to prove you
wrote a snippet of code if the variables have been renamed.
It all goes back to my original reply in this thread. If you don't want
it copied, don't put it on the web. Otherwise, it is almost a guarantee
that it will be copied - if it is worth copying.
And all it takes to make it not fall under the copywrite is to change it
around a little, reword it a little, and maybe even change a few words.
With code, it is even harder as it is nearly impossible to prove you
wrote a snippet of code if the variables have been renamed.
It all goes back to my original reply in this thread. If you don't want
it copied, don't put it on the web. Otherwise, it is almost a guarantee
that it will be copied - if it is worth copying.
D
Dr John Stockton
JRS: In article <[email protected]>, dated Wed, 26 Oct
2005 14:00:34, seen in Randy Webb
Not so; if it is still the same creative work, it is still covered by
copyright (YSCIB). All that such changing does is to inhibit mechanical
detection and require somewhat more effort for subsequent proof.
True, of course, if the code is otherwise short and reasonably obvious.
However, ISTM that if both the echt and the ersatz code were run through
the same obfuscator, they'd give the same result. One could defeat that
by shuffling declarations ; var a,b,c,d; -> var b,c,d,a; ; but if the
obfuscator had an option to use the same identifier for all identifiers
in the same "block", that would be defeated.
Those who are clever enough to copy code illegally and alter it so much
that the lack of new creativity is not evident on skilled comparison of
echt & ersatz will also be clever enough to read and understand the echt
and then re-implement the algorithm from knowledge that they now have;
and that is no breach of copyright.
But you're taking the typically-American attitude that the intent of the
Law is irrelevant, and nothing matters unless you get caught and proven
guilty. In the case of Copyright, there is a clear and inevitable gap
between what the legislation indicates as proper practice and what is
likely to lead to a conviction.
In any case, your observations would not contradict what Tim wrote,
since his words included nothing against unmodified republication.
2005 14:00:34, seen in Randy Webb
Not so; if it is still the same creative work, it is still covered by
copyright (YSCIB). All that such changing does is to inhibit mechanical
detection and require somewhat more effort for subsequent proof.
True, of course, if the code is otherwise short and reasonably obvious.
However, ISTM that if both the echt and the ersatz code were run through
the same obfuscator, they'd give the same result. One could defeat that
by shuffling declarations ; var a,b,c,d; -> var b,c,d,a; ; but if the
obfuscator had an option to use the same identifier for all identifiers
in the same "block", that would be defeated.
Those who are clever enough to copy code illegally and alter it so much
that the lack of new creativity is not evident on skilled comparison of
echt & ersatz will also be clever enough to read and understand the echt
and then re-implement the algorithm from knowledge that they now have;
and that is no breach of copyright.
But you're taking the typically-American attitude that the intent of the
Law is irrelevant, and nothing matters unless you get caught and proven
guilty. In the case of Copyright, there is a clear and inevitable gap
between what the legislation indicates as proper practice and what is
likely to lead to a conviction.
In any case, your observations would not contradict what Tim wrote,
since his words included nothing against unmodified republication.
R
Randy Webb
Dr John Stockton said the following on 10/27/2005 7:26 AM:
IYSS, but I doubt it. It's too easy to circumvent copyright laws when it
comes to documents on the web.
All I have to do is change the variable names. There is nothing unique
in Javascript that hasn't been done before and will inevitably be
repeated later.
I disagree with that, but to each his own.
It has nothing to do with a "typically-American" attitude but your
typically anti-American attitude is showing through. It has to do with
simple common sense.
If my goal had been to agree with Tim, I would have replied to Tim.
IYSS, but I doubt it. It's too easy to circumvent copyright laws when it
comes to documents on the web.
All I have to do is change the variable names. There is nothing unique
in Javascript that hasn't been done before and will inevitably be
repeated later.
I disagree with that, but to each his own.
It has nothing to do with a "typically-American" attitude but your
typically anti-American attitude is showing through. It has to do with
simple common sense.
If my goal had been to agree with Tim, I would have replied to Tim.
L
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen
Randy Webb said:
I'm not sure I understand that. You can't circumvent a law. Either
you break it or you don't (which it is is decided by a court, if
there is any doubt). What you might be "circumventing" is the
illegality being detected.
That would create a derived work. It would be an infringement on the
original. Whether it's detectable or not does not change its legality,
only whether you are caught or not.
Sure there is. As soon as you get beyond small scriptlets, and into
programming at a serious size, you will have non-obvious combinations
of ideas that are protected by copyright.
Taking the line drawing library at
<URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/borderline.js>[1]
and simply changing the variable names will not fool anybody.
(Although it does need some changing, I admit, e.g., putting
properties on the prototype instead of adding them in the
constructor
I agree that a simple form validation will probably be too trivial
to be covered by copyright.
/L
[1] It's used in page <URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/rotatingStar.html>.
Use a CSS 2 compliant browser to see it.
E
Evertjan.
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen wrote on 28 okt 2005 in comp.lang.javascript:
There is a difference between copyright and patent.
1 Copyright, being implicit to writing, can protect your writing, not the
story ore a described method.
2 Patent, has to be declared, covers method.
The how-to/method is never protected by copyright.
There is no patent on a painting.
There is no copyright on a regex string,
except when it is exceptional beautiful beond it's usfulness.
IMHO, ho, ho.
There is a difference between copyright and patent.
1 Copyright, being implicit to writing, can protect your writing, not the
story ore a described method.
2 Patent, has to be declared, covers method.
The how-to/method is never protected by copyright.
There is no patent on a painting.
There is no copyright on a regex string,
except when it is exceptional beautiful beond it's usfulness.
IMHO, ho, ho.
J
johan
Do NOT publish it..!
V
VK
Evertjan. said:
Not exactly right at least for the United States. Copyright can be
applied to i) information, ii) particular algorithm iii) set of methods
(format) iv) software product.
Each copyright can be protected by patent to get profit from your
intellectual work. To protect law-unaware and poor people there is
so-called "Natural Copyright" protection law. Inder this law you have
two years since your discover to claim your priority and get the patent
(of course you have to prove your priority first). So if you write some
breath-taking RegExp set and it goes to the wide use, you have two
years to get yourselve to US (California would be the best choice) and
try to get some money out of it. Not saying it's too much practically
possible but nothing wrong in the theory
E
Evertjan.
VK wrote on 31 okt 2005 in comp.lang.javascript:
That's why we call a patent a patent?
Each? It seems unbelievable.
So I can patent the above sentences?
That's why we call a patent a patent?
Each? It seems unbelievable.
So I can patent the above sentences?
J
Julian Turner
Luc said:
If you mean physically prevent someone copying (whether or not in
breach of applicable copyright laws), then you can't. You can only
make it more difficult.
Even if you could prevent access to the source:-
1. If it can be read, it can be manually copied, and it can be captured
using "Print Screen".
2. If it can be printed, it can be OCR'd.
Julian
V
VK
Evertjan. said:
Yes you could try. You just missing the main feature of
copyright/patent domain: it deals with something that has immediate or
potential *value* for the public use.
Also in the creative writing domain (that was OP) there are "common
knowledge" and "common vocabulary" limitations. This is why you cannot
claim your rights on the sentence "George W. Buch is not the brightest
guy on the Earth", as well as you cannot copyright say "programming
language" term. The latter limitation by the way explains the fact that
nearly any hightech company has its own set of proprietary synonyms for
common technical terms.
But if say some company decides to run world wide anti-eval() campain
over TV and if they take "Eval is Evil" as the main ad slogan, someone
in this newsgroup may get rich overnight.
J
Julian Turner
VK said:
You could not *try* in the United Kingdom.
Ultimately, one must consider the concepts, and the exact legal
consequences of those concepts, together.
We could all argue about how "patent" or "copyright" is to be defined,
but what is more important, is what are the consequences of putting a
given invention or work in the "patent" or "copyright" category.
In the United Kingdom, the "legal concept" of a patent is carefully
defined by our laws, and expressly does not include software or
textual materials. What it covers are inventions for a physical
product or industrial process. The reason for this narrow definition,
is that a patent gives very strong protection, so it could have
unintended consequences if we were to allow just anything of *value* to
be patent.
The key legal/social issue at stake is about when you give someone an
enforceable monopoly over ideas, and for how long: this produces heated
debate about the balance between encouraging commercial investment in
idea creation, and not giving too big a monopoly.
In answering this question, most laws have tended to divide ideas
between different concepts and different consequents.
For these purposes, in the UK we have patents, designs, and copyrights,
each of which have different conseqences (and it is the consequences
that drive the concept after all):-
1. A patent covers novel (a tough test) inventions for physical
products and processes, prevents anyone else using the idea at all,
even if you independently discovered it. I.e. it effectively blocks
further development of the idea, except by the owner of the patent.
For these reasons its protection is limited to 20-25 years.
2. A design covers physical shape and configuation of products,
prevents independent reinvention, and affords protection for 15 years.
3. Copyright prevents me from "copying" your expression of an idea, but
does not prevent me from expressing the idea differently, or crucially,
independently "reinventing" the same idea. As a result it is a more
flexible system, but in return gives protection for 70 years +.
In the United Kingdom, software falls under 3, because of a fear that
too much protection will stifle software development, and the European
Parliament recently rejected attempts to make software alone
patentable, despite considerable lobbying from large software
companies. It will no doubt be tried again and again.
If software were patentable, then if we take windowed GUI as an example
(assuming it had just been invented), whoever created the first
windowed GUI would have stopped everyone else, and you would have no
competion in the market place between Microsoft, Apple, and Linus
windowed GUIs.
Of course, I don't want to put a stop to any debate about concepts as
such, or assert that any laws are necessary the best there could be.
If you see "copyright" and "patent", and the protection each is
affored, as being the same, then that is your opinion.
However, philosophically, is not the purpose of the a "concept" an
experiment in diving up the "continuum", in which case should we not
try to at least try to distinguish our concepts, rather than merge
them. Otherwise, why bother with them?
And when it comes to "legal" concepts, the task is to democratically
define our concepts and consequences (whatever personally you may
believe), based on what society wants or needs at any given time.
This is often an iterative process: if we attach "these
rights/consequences" to "this activity", is that socially and
economically right at this time.
Julian
V
VK
Patent vs. copyright :
you may enjoy reading about the famous GIF format story. There are a
lot of sources like the one below.
BTW : Great Britain stopped to pump up money from this *patented
algorythm* one year later than the US. (And you personally stopped your
occasional copyright violation only in June of 2004).
Microsoft was smart enough to publically claim at the very beginning
(Windows 1.0) that Windows is "a derivative creative development of
Apple graphical user interface" and now they are safe. If they did not
do that, and if Apple was not so self-secured that time to not patent
it, then currently Bill Gates would wash socks to Steve Jobs) and
KDE for Linux would not exist :-((
OFF TOPIC anyway...
you may enjoy reading about the famous GIF format story. There are a
lot of sources like the one below.
BTW : Great Britain stopped to pump up money from this *patented
algorythm* one year later than the US. (And you personally stopped your
occasional copyright violation only in June of 2004).
Microsoft was smart enough to publically claim at the very beginning
(Windows 1.0) that Windows is "a derivative creative development of
Apple graphical user interface" and now they are safe. If they did not
do that, and if Apple was not so self-secured that time to not patent
it, then currently Bill Gates would wash socks to Steve Jobs
) andKDE for Linux would not exist :-((
OFF TOPIC anyway...