One of the most difficult things about protecting your content on the Web is finding ways to encourage legitimate sharing of content without encouraging less desired use. We almost all want people to Tweet, link to and quote our content but we don’t want to encourage spammers and we always want to make sure that proper attribution is applied.

There have been a slew of services that have worked to make exactly that possible. Ranging from licensing solutions such as Creative Commons to technology-oriented ones such as Emebed Article and Tynt Insight (formerly known as Tracer).

However, there is another service, Clp.ly, which hopes to make a dent in the field.

Clp.ly is both a bookmarklet and a button/JavaScript embedded into websites that make embedding content (or “clipping” content) extremely easy and elegant.

The idea is to make it simple and attractive to correctly cite content from various sites, including both pulling quotes and snapping images. This raises the simple question “How well does it work?” The answer, overall, seems to be that it does the job very well.

The Bookmarklet

The most common way one would likely use Clp.ly is via a bookmarklet installed in the browser. The bookmarklet can be used one of two ways.

First, if you select text on the screen and then click the bookmarklet, you are given the option to embed just that text. The quote can either be shared directly via a link on clp.ly’s server or it can be easily embedded into a blog post or any page with HTML. Here is an example taken from this page.

In April, @BadAstronomer, Phil Plait, moderated a panel

From Geeky Pleasures (share this quote)

All in all, the embed has three elements, the first is the quote itself, which is framed with large quotemarks and formatted to stand out, the second is a direct link to the source page (albeit masked by a short url provided by Clp.ly) and finally a link to share the quote via Twitter, Facebook and other services.

The other method for using the bookmarklet is to simply click the link without selecting text and Clp.ly will instead direct you to a page that will allow you to embed a formatted screenshot of the page via a screen like this:

Basically, the tool lets you select the relevant part of the page by moving the slider up and down the left-hand column and resize the image you want to make using the box in the center. From there you’re given an embed code for your site and a direct URL for the clip.

Here is what a sample image embed looks like, once again using the site above.

Clipped from: Geeky Pleasures (share this clip)

As you can see, it is a fairly powerful clipping bookmarklet and, if you register for an account, you’ll get the added feature of having your clips stored and remembered in your profile. This can make it somewhat useful as a research and bookmarking tool though, admittedly, Diigo is probably a better choice for that function.

But as nice as the bookmarklet is, it is only half of the equation. Clp.ly also offers an easy way to embed the service into your site, making it available for everyone.

Clp.ly for Webmasters

If you register for an account, you can also add your Web sites to the service and that will let you embed Clp.ly’s functionality into your site for all to use, whether or not the user has the bookmarklet installed.

The button works much the same as the bookmarklet, having the same functions on click, but the JavaScript that powers it adds a new feature, copy detection.

When a user selects and copies text on your site, they are greeted with a small popup similar to the one above.

Though the content is copied as is to the clipboard, the user is prompted to either format the content for embedding or take a screen capture if they want. Compare this to Tynt which, when it adds attribution to copied text, does so stealthily and without warning to the user.

This turns the attribution protection into more of a value-add for the person doing the copying as the formatted version is more attractive than plain text.

One feature I could not get to work in my testing is that the system is also supposed to warn visitors when they are attempting to copy too much text. If a user copies more than 100 words, they are supposed to get a fair use warning with a link to the Wikipedia article on the subject (though I would recommend this link instead). Likewise, if they copy a very small amount, they’re given a chance to search for the term.

To those who were uneasy about the way Tynt stealthily added the attribution line to content protected by it, Clp.ly will likely seem like a good compromise, pasting the content to the clipboard as is but offering the user the chance to have it preformatted for inclusion.

Drawbacks and Limitations

To be clear, Clp.ly is not a perfect solution and it does lack features that other services offer. For example, the service can not share images in the way that Embed Anything can nor does it offer the robust tracking of Tynt (though it does monitor “trackbacks” that pass through the service).

Also, during my use of the service I ran into a few bugs. For one, I received none of the emails I should have gotten from Clp.ly and instead received warnings the messages could not be sent. This made password recovery impossible after I lost my temporary password for my first account.

Likewise, some of the links to various clip did not work well for me, taking me instead to my clips when I was logged in.

However, for the most part, Clp.ly is a solid and effective service. It may not have all the features one could want but likely has the features that one needs and strikes a good balance between forcing attribution down a user’s throat and simply hoping for the best.

In short, it is not an ideal solution but for many interested in this type of protection it may be the best available.

Bottom Line

There’s a lot of features I’d like to see out of Clp.ly including more robust stats, direct links to source material (no Clp.ly short url when not needed) and an invisible button (meaning it is only activated on the copying of text) but the service is still very powerful and works very well.

Though I don’t think it’s going to sway large media companies who use Tynt at this time, largely due to the small nature of the company and the lack of invisible tracking, it shows a great deal of potential and may be perfect for small-to-midsize bloggers and webmasters who want to do a little bit more to encourage good copying of their text.

So if you are interested in this kind of functionality, give Clp.ly a look, you may find it to be perfect for you.

If you are curious to see how it works, I’ve enabled it on this article so feel free to play around with it for a bit.

No trackbacks yet

Earlier this month, I reported on a new beta service by Tynt called Tracer. The service works by having webmasters add a line of JavaScript code to their site that allows Tracer to track when users select, copy and otherwise interact with text and images on the site.

Though not actually a copy protection system, it lets writers know which of their articles are being copied the most and also adds an attribution line to the clipboard of the person doing the copying, so works are correctly attributed once they are pasted (this does not work with images).

Though the service has obvious limitations, such as not being able to work with RSS feeds, it has generated some interest for readers of this site and I have a few updates on the service as well as some p broad statistics on how PT is being copied.

Bug Corrections/Issues

First, the bug issue that I reported on that caused page views to not be counted seems to have been fixed. Page views are reporting though the numbers don’t seem to jive very well with my stats elsewhere. However, this could be caused by a lot of issues and may or may not be a problem with Tracer.

The actual tracking of copies and selections seem to be working well. One does have to remember that the default view sets to seven days, meaning older copies and views scroll off the page the table day to day (this caused some confusion).

All in all, the bug fix seems to work and the tracking is functioning as advertised.

No-Attribution JavaScript

Tynt is also in the early stages of testing a version of the JavaScript that does not cause users to have an attribution line copied along with the text, meaning that Tracer simply tracks the content passively and doesn’t interfere. I’ve added the test script to my site to help with their testing and you can play with it if you wish (though it shouldn’t actually be visible to the user).

It’s been a huge help to me as I often copy from my own site to include in emails and other posts, making that feature somewhat annoying.

Some General Discoveries

With nearly a month of Tracer usage under my belt, I’ve made a few observations about what content is being copied on PT that may be applicable to other sites:

1. Pages Get Copied the Most: Static pages seem to be getting the lion’s share of the copying. The top three pages on PT are What is a Copyright, Stock Letters (which is intended specifically for copying) and The Limitations of Copyright. Though some posts did well too, pages clearly saw the most copying, though only a fraction of the most traffic.
2. No Correlation Between Selections, Copies and Page Views: The three statistics almost could not be more unrelated to one another. The How to Find Plagiarism page was the most visited and was third in the number of selections but saw almost no copying. Likewise, an older post about the role of schools in fighting plagiarism saw almost no traffic, but was the most copied post despite very few selections. The end result is that it is impossible to predict the amount of copying based on the amount of traffic.
3. Most Copies Generate No Traffic: Despite several thousand copies, only 20 page views were generated by Tracer. This isn’t wholly unexpected as many of the copies will not be used in Web pages and many will remove the Tracer link in favor of their own, but it seems to favor the idea of removing the attribution requirement and making Tracer a passive observer.

All in all, these are some interesting, if somewhat unexpected, results from Tracer and they make me want to follow the service’s metrics closer but also having me wishing for additional information, such as referral data and more specific information about what was copied.

Bottom Line

Though Tracer has only a limited usability as a content protection tools, Webmasters who are interested in seeing how their content is being used, especially those that work with static pages, should definitely consider trying it.

It definitely has its limitations, but can provide some great insight nonetheless.

Also, since Lightbox disables or limits access to most of the right click tools, including the “save image” attribute, some Webmasters have come to think of it as a way to prevent or reduce image theft.

However, Lightbox was never designed to stop or slow down image theft. Though it is a very beautiful effect and a very effective way to display images, it is not effective at preventing users from copying images. That was never the goal of it.

In fact, there are several simple and easy means of circumventing the protections Lightbox does provide, none of which require any special knowledge or expertise.

Easily Defeated

Lightbox, as widespread as it is, does nothing to prevent users from downloading the images in a gallery. There are at least three methods that any visitor can use to download the full-sized images to their hard drive.

First, on the gallery page itself, all the user has to do is right click the thumbnail of the image and then select “save target as”. Since Lightbox galleries link directly to the larger image, pulling the javascript on the click itself, this enables the user to download the full-sized image and completely bypass the javascript effects.

Second, after one has opened the image in the Lightbox frame, all one has to do is click the image itself and drag it to their desktop or an open folder. The trick to making this work is to click before the Lightbox frame has fully loaded. After the frame is completely open, this kind of drag and drop is, in most cases, disabled.

Finally, in the same vein as the second attack, it is also possible, while the Lightbox frame is loading, to right click the image and save it that way. In both cases, the best time is after the image has loaded, but before all of the surrounding items have opened up.

In addition to those methods, it is also possible to simply take a screenshot of the image and crop it out or switch off Javascript to completely bypassing the Lightbox effect.

The bottom line is that there are many different ways to copy full images hidden in a Lightbox gallery and any site that relies on Lightbox as part of its content protection strategy needs to realize that Lightbox does not provide any actual protection.

Securing Lightbox

Those who are interested in using and securing Lightbox can take several steps to help reduce the amount of content theft they experience.

1. Eliminate right click on gallery pages: Though very annoying to legitimate users, if you’re certain there is no valid reason to be right clicking on a page, you can disable right click on the gallery page to prevent people from saving the target. Use with great caution.
2. Require Javascript: Since the vast majority of browsers have access to javascript, you can require it to view the gallery page. Anyone who does not have it will not be exposed to the raw images after clicking through.
3. Use Modified Scripts: Using modified versions of Lightbox, you can embed the image in a flash file and let viewers see it that way. The prevents the full image from being exposed.

However, as powerful as those methods are, they can only address some of the ways to circumvent Lightbox. The only real way to secure Lightbox, or any gallery for that matter, is to ensure that the full image is never downloaded to the user’s computer by watermarking them before they are sent out, either on your machine or on your server.

Sadly, Lightbox, nor any other javascript gallery system, will be able to fully protect images, though they may create some frustration and confusion for lazy plagiarists.

Conclusions

None of this is intended to be a criticism of Lightbox. Lightbox never claimed to be nor was it ever designed to protect content. It is an interesting and practical effect, but not much more.

However, when it comes to image protection, Webmasters often times misplace their trust into techniques and methods that were never designed to stop theft. In a desperate attempt to abate very real and very reasonable worries about theft and plagiarism, some will turn to anything that even gives the vague appearance of offering protection.

Sadly, this kind of misguided trust is more dangerous than having no protection at all. If one is vulnerable and they know they are at risk, they can take precautions and seek out real methods to address the problem. If they put their faith in false protection, they do nothing but remain just as vulnerable.

Lightbox is a great script but it is important to note the limitations of it. Anyone who is relying upon it for image protection needs to be aware that it is nothing of the sort. Fortunately, there are real protection methods available and, if you wish, you do not have to remove your Lightbox effect to use them.

It just requires some advance planning and preparation.