The bottom line with web development is it's nearly impossible to prevent your images from being copied, unless you're using a delivery tool such as Dreamweaver. But you can make it much more difficult with some fairly simply page development techniques. For example, you can disable the "right click" copy option in Internet Explorer. Or, you can place your image underneath another transparent image, so that the person copying it get's the transparent image (and not your image).

None of these techniques will stop an expert (because there are other ways to get the image). But they work for the less experienced person. And, some level of protection is better than none.

Search the Internet for "Web Development - protecting your images" and you'll find a lot of discussion about these techniques. Here are a couple of links that I've found useful:

Copyright: Image Protection
http://www.wildlifephoto.net/article...rotection.html
Web Development: Protecting Your Images On The Web
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/p...icle.asp?ID=41

Beyond these techniques, use a copyright on all of your unique image and text content. A copyright won't stop someone from making a copy. But, at least you'll have some level of legal remedy, if you want to use it.

I personally think it's good practice to use the meta tags for copyright as well as displaying a copyright on each page. I place my copyright in the footing of each page.


Ron Baker
http://www.apex-systems.net
http://hilton-head-property.com