Stop webpage text being copied

Question

I'm not sure if this is possible but I'm not having much look with google.

I'd like to display text on a web page which can't be seen via view source or copied off the page. We've looked at a few options including converting the text to an image but that didn't seem to work very well.

Is anyone aware of a way of doing this?

I know I can use javascript to make it harder for people to copy the text but that's easy to get around.

The text will be dynamic and stored in a database.

It's not possible in any sane way. The way to fight content theft is the law - in the US, e.g. the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act — Pekka, Apr 23 '13 at 09:53
If a user can see it, they can copy it. There is no way to hide it as you have already shown them it. It is possible to make it harder, such as disabling copy from the mouse menu or blocking the keyboard shortcut but they can still view it in the source. Even if you saved it as an image to stop people copying it from the source, they can still manually copy it by typing the text into a notepad or something. — MatthewMcGovern, Apr 23 '13 at 09:53
As the other commenters mentioned, it's impossible to stop them from seeing the source and you can make it more difficult. If you're in wordpress one night plugin I found was CopyRightPro and it works very well. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/copyrightpro/ — user1048676, Apr 23 '13 at 10:01
Possible duplicate [Prevent selecting & copying](http://stackoverflow.com/q/1057052/1409082). — Jocelyn, Apr 23 '13 at 10:03
put this into your page footer: "Chuck Norris will come for you if you copy anything from this page!" — Alex Shesterov, Apr 23 '13 at 10:22

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 23 '13 at 10:01

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The very most you can do is annoy people with your attempts. It simply can't be done.

answered Apr 23 '13 at 10:01

E.J. Brennan

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That's what I think but yesterday I've encounterd a page where i selected text, right-clicked, my context-menu came up but when I clicked copy, the data wasn't copied to the clipboard. Ctrl+C had no effect either. Firefox, Windows. It was unlikely to be Flash because Adblock shows a little "Block" tab for them and this one didn't have it, I have Silverlight disabled so I wonder how it worked. I wanted to recheck but today it's 503. – n611x007 Oct 25 '13 at 15:49

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

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Actually this thing need to be done with JavaScript rather than PHP.

There are JS scripts that prevent the text from being selected ( and after that copied ) from the Website.

You can see further here

No Right Click

Prevent Copy Paste

And with this you can get the text from the source. So what we can do here? There is a simple solution which Metro Lyrics uses to prevent the text from being copied from the sources. I don't know what is the name but they convert the characters to something that are codes of the characters... You can see them in their lyrics sources.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

Community

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answered Apr 23 '13 at 10:00

Miro Markaravanes

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This is useless as long as the user can disable javascript with a simple mouseclick. – Gerald Schneider Apr 23 '13 at 10:12
Right but when we can't make something impossible lets make it not easily possible :-p – Miro Markaravanes Apr 23 '13 at 10:14
Actually you can do a screenshot and run OCR on it to copy every text in the world. – Miro Markaravanes Apr 23 '13 at 10:15

score -2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 23 '13 at 09:57

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Using js to capture key and mouse event, when user want to copy it, stop this action.

answered Apr 23 '13 at 09:57

Lee Lin

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The user can disable Javascript. Your solution does not work. – Jocelyn Apr 23 '13 at 10:00

Stop webpage text being copied

3 Answers3