Protecting stuff online

[Fallen Angel]

Okay, so we all know the futility of trying to encrypt HTML - can't be done, at least in a way that's 100% foolproof, and to be honest, I don't know about your HTML, but mine's nothing spectacular. There's only so many ways you can combine a <div> and so many ways you can mix 'n' match a <td> (not that tables would be seen dead on my site's on the whole, unless they're there for a special reason). I KNOW you can't hide HTML, and I'm really not that bothered about it.

But....

I'm in the midst of a redesign of my personal site (long overdue) and one of the things I'm trying to do is get my poetry collection back online (it sort of fell off in a somewhat hurried server move in Sept 2006). Having recently had a poem ripped off from another of my sites, I'm now extremely wary of putting stuff online, but I would like to get the poetry collection back up there.

I know the only true way to protect stuff's not to put it online in the first place, but I want to try and make it a little bit harder. Tonight I've been investigating some of those supposedly wonderful software packages that claim to hide your content from everything, stopping anybody doing anything with it, and making you a nice cup of coffee in the process no doubt. Of course the big problem (apart from the fact that they don't work very well), it that they only work on javascript enabled browsers...no javascript, no nothing. Hardly accessible.

So, anyone got any ideas as to how I could make it a bit harder for people to grab, but for it still to remain accessible?

I'm thinking ideally preventing selecting, and possibly preventing printing (this isn't for the whole site btw, just one particular set of pages). I can't think of a way to do it without js, which of course brings me back to the original problem. I really don't want to go down the pdf route - apart from being a PITA to convert them all to pdf, there's the accessibility problems with pdfs as well. The only thing I can possibly think of (may have a look and see if I can find any preventing printing js scripts) is to overlay a transparent image over the page...but then again it's quite easy to get rid of images...*sigh*

Anyone any thoughts? (apart from don't be so silly FA and just don't put it on the web! )

[Anti]

Make the poem a graphic maybe?

[Fallen Angel]

Hmmmm, I did wonder about that briefly, but that's going to be inaccessible as well (plus we're talking 50+ poems here). On reflection (I decided in the shower this morning - where I do my best thinking ) I think my first thought was the right one, that it's a futile exercise, but what I am thinking of doing is using Copyscape, and particularly Copysentry on just the poetry pages. I write the stuff for me, but having written it, I like to share it, but having recently had one of my poems copied, I am more wary now.

I've taken the precaution of establishing my copyright by printing off all the stuff, sticking it in an envelope with a label over the flap of the envelope with the date stamped on and mailing it to myself (something I learned years ago when I was a member of a writer's group), but I know the only real protection's not to put it on the web. Having said that though, I remember looking at one of these encryption software things, and it did work with javascript disabled (the others just give a blank page if js's disabled) which I was going to look at to see if it had any potential, but of course that must have been one that I forgot to bookmark. *sigh*

[PrawnDog]

I think it was about a year ago someone sent a link to one of these systems - I seem to remember it was posted on an OU conference. They gave an example, and it took me about an hour to reverse-engineer it using PHP to scrape and parse the page. There again, was it worth it - probably not, but it was a challenge, a bit of fun, and better that the stuff I was supposed to be doing at that time!

As you say, nothing is foolproof (you can often OCR a graphic, unless the font is particularly hard, but it still takes time). There again, if you really want to publish your poetry, then as long as your audience know you wrote it, who cares if some scumbag copies it? It's their loss if it doesn't affect you financially, as your audience will still appreciate it for what it is. They say that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" - I'm not so sure, but I doubt that your audience will really, truly care.