‘Locking’ Text

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I am looking for a way to “lock” text on an HTML page so it’s impossible to copy and paste it. I’m working now on a web site that has pages from a book on the site and I don’t want anyone copying and editing the text.
I heard of the ability to disable context menus and disabling certain keyboard combinations, but have no idea how to do it.
any help graciously received!
Thanks,
Hyam Kuptsow

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The very nature of HTML makes this a daunting task. As you mentioned, there are ways to lock the Right-click menu and even keyboard combinations. But there is no way from stopping someone from opening their browser’s Cache (Temporary files) to copy the code – at least that’s what I would do…

Your best bet would be to create PDF files that can be locked. PDFs can prevent people from copying text and even from printing! See Adobe’s Website for more details…

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No easy – as soon as it is displayed on the user’s screen they could simply use a screen-capture and feed the image through some OCR software.

There is software available – see Softcab and Creabit – which makes claims to protect what you have published, but I am somewhat dubious.

To disable the right_click menu, you can use Javascript, such as this from Dynamic Drive – but this is easy enough to defeat.

I would guess the simplest option to prevent petty pilfering would be to simply present the text as a graphic – this would at least disable someone simply wiping the text with their cursor and doing a copy-paste.

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there is also the possibility of layering your text underneath a transparent image.

But as was the comment before, if the user checks her or his cache for the files your text is not safe.

cu, L

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