To answer your question, it is definitely trivial to impliment such code. I’ve experimented with it in the past. The problem is that it can also be trivially defeated, often by just disabling javascript or viewing the HTML code.

Worse still, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to select text on a Web site including quoting, some bookmarking services and keeping one’s place when reading a long work. The negative impact on legitimate users outweighs the benefits in stopping plagiarists.

Besides, I encourage attributed copying of my work. Using such a script would defeat the point of my CC License.

Honestly though, for most people, it is a very bad idea to use the no select text script. I’ve written about it a few times on this site, most recent time here: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/01/04/the-six-worst-ways-to-protect-content/

Personally, I don’t think I could ever use it or encourage others to do so.

To answer your question, it is definitely trivial to impliment such code. I’ve experimented with it in the past. The problem is that it can also be trivially defeated, often by just disabling javascript or viewing the HTML code.

Worse still, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to select text on a Web site including quoting, some bookmarking services and keeping one’s place when reading a long work. The negative impact on legitimate users outweighs the benefits in stopping plagiarists.

Besides, I encourage attributed copying of my work. Using such a script would defeat the point of my CC License.

Honestly though, for most people, it is a very bad idea to use the no select text script. I’ve written about it a few times on this site, most recent time here: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/01/04/the-s...

Personally, I don’t think I could ever use it or encourage others to do so.

Stopping the stealing of rss feeds is important, but one question does come to my novice mind. What about preventing the copying of your writing on this site?

Copying content manually is much more time consuming that an automated rss steal. But still, anyone could manually copy anything you have written here and paste it on their own site as their own writing. I have been told that it is easy to turn off the ability to select and copy text on a web site. But since it is not disabled at this, of all, sites, I was wondering if my information was incorrect?

Stopping the stealing of rss feeds is important, but one question does come to my novice mind. What about preventing the copying of your writing on this site?

Copying content manually is much more time consuming that an automated rss steal. But still, anyone could manually copy anything you have written here and paste it on their own site as their own writing. I have been told that it is easy to turn off the ability to select and copy text on a web site. But since it is not disabled at this, of all, sites, I was wondering if my information was incorrect?

I am not on WordPress (instead I use ExpressionEngine) and have not been able to stop these scrapers (nor have the other sites being scraped).

I really wish Feedburner had the ability or willingness to block these folks by IP or something.