Update 8/5: The issue mentioned below where the image was not aligning has been fixed.

Embed Anything, formerly known as EmbedArticle, has added a new feature to its service that makes images easily embeddable into other sites.

The new feature aims to encourage legitimate use of images on other sites while helping artists and photographers earn revenue from such embeds via advertising. It does this by making images available for embedding via YouTube-style JavaScript code, using a process that is very similar to what the company previously did, and continues to do, for text articles.

Given how widespread image misuse is and how quickly the issue is growing it is easy to see why a service such as Embed Anything may be very tempting. But is it the right service for artists seeking to protect and profit from their work? The answer greatly depends on the type of work you create and the kinds of reuse you wish to permit.

How it Works

The process of setting up Embed Anything on your site is very straightforward and requires only a few seconds. You simply give the site your email address and set a password to register for an account and, when logged in, you just add the applicable code to your site (Note: Be careful you are adding the image code and NOT the article code as they are two separate functions.)

Once you have added the code (or installed the WordPress plugin), images on your site will have an overlay that will appear once the user scrolls their mouse over the image. It’s a simple yellow box that says “Embed Image”.

Clicking that box sill open up a small popup that will provide the embed code for the image and offers a disclaimer about what the embed does.

The user then copies the code into their site or post and the image appears with an attribution line underneath and an ad overlayed on top of it.

Content creators can edit their advertising settings in their account options and, if they choose, will receive 50% of all exposures of the ad.

All in all, the process is extremely simple but it is worth noting that Embed Anything is NOT intended to offer any image protections. Users can very easily still right click the image to save it as the overlay does nothing to block any normal user interactions, other than adding the box on mouseover.

The Good

Focusing solely on the image functionality, with the article technology having been previously covered, there is little doubt that the setup and install is as simple as can be, easier than even the almost-as-simple article version.

All that you do is sign up for an account, add the JavaScript and go, the only potential complexity is adding your own ad code but you can do that easily after verifying your site. All in all, there is almost no reason the sign up and set up should take longer than a few moments.

The system also seems to work well. It is unobtrusive to visitors of the site using it, not interfering with any typical behavior, but still offers a clear and polite hint to embed the content via this method and not downloading and reusing, likely unlawfully.

On that front, once the code is placed into a visitor’s site, it seems to work very well, providing a text link back to the source and, when possible, overlaying an ad, which may or may not be appealing depending upon your goals.

In short, the system does exactly what it says it will do but there are several caveats and limitations to be aware of before placing the code on your site.

The Bad

In exchange for the simplicity of Embed Anything you sacrifice features and customization. There is no way to disable the ad, change the look and feel of the “Embed Image” box nor alter the images it appears on beyond using a special image class, class=”emba_no_img”, to indicate that you don’t want the overlay applied.

This means that, with Embed Anything, what you see is what you get. If you don’t like the way it operates, you are simply out of luck. There isn’t much more that you can do as even the WordPress plugin only has one option, to add the publisher ID.

As far as the ad goes, many aren’t going to want to display the ad and those who do may feel the 50/50 adspace split is a bit low. To make matters worse, it is unclear if and how this would work with Google Adsense TOS, especially if the images were placed on sites that violated some element of those terms.

Likewise, I am not sure how useful the link back will be. There is no way to alter the link text to prove attribution to your site. It simply says “See more images here…” and links to the source. There’s no mention of the site’s name or the who created the image.

Finally, there simply isn’t a great deal of intelligence within the Embed Anything system. Though ads won’t appear on images that are too small, the system will automatically apply to all images, regardless of size, location, etc. included in your site. There is no way to tell the system to only offer embeds for images of certain sizes, names, locations, etc. and images such as your logo will also have the overlay (as you can see above).

In short, the system works as advertised and do so very easily, but don’t expect any bells and whistles. This is meant to be a streamlined experience for both parties and, unfortunately, that comes at the price of options and features.

Bottom Line

Personally, I can’t see that many webmasters, bloggers and/or artists using this service as it is. Not only is it too limited in terms of customization, but it is just not a feature it seems many were clamoring for, at least outside of the mainstream media.

Granted, at least one photography group, Picture Group, has integrated Embed Anything into their site. However, they did it with a heavily customized version, not the code or features offered in the stock version.

So, unless you have a highly specific need for such embedding and the capability to customize it to make it work as you want, you likely aren’t going to find this service very compelling. That being said, for those whose needs fit what Embed Anything is offering, they will likely find this service to be a godsend.

As usual with these types of reviews, I’ve enabled Embed Anything’s image service on this article so you are free to play around with it, even though it seems a bit odd to use Embed Anything to embed screenshots of Embed Anything’s service.

Play with it and decide for yourself it is right for you, it is truly the best way to decide.

Update 8/4: Have now notices an additional problem with Embed Anything, it messes up image alignment, at least on my blog. You can see this at the top with the Embed Anything logo, which should be pushed to the left and, instead, has the equivalent of alignnone.

Twitter, through its media blog, recently announced that it is making it easy to embed tweets into your site, the way many already add YouTube clips or audio from various sources.

The idea is fairly simple, you visit Twitter’s experimental “Blackbird Pie” page, paste in the full URL of the tweet (it ends with /status/########) and Twitter creates a block of HTML code that you paste into your site.

But is this something that users of Twitter really need? Though tweets are often cited in long articles, including this one pointed out by Twitter on ReadWriteWeb, the process has worked fine before and alternatives already exist.

Though I can’t say for certain how popular this feature will be, I can definitely see reasons why those who wish to quote and the Twitter users they pull from should cheer this move. However, there are also a few concerns that have me a bit worried about using this service.

How it Works

As mentioned above, all you do to use the service is find the URL of the tweet you want to cite, paste it into Twitter’s Blackbird Pie page and then insert the generated HTML into your post. Here are two samples.

First, the very first tweet from my significant other’s Twitter account for her new art blog.

Here is one from my friend and Copyright 2.0 Show co-host Patrick O’Keefe’s Twitter stream:

Finally, here is one twitter user @iLoveCopyright:

As you can see looking at the three samples, each one tries to keep the formatting of the original tweet but fails. The reason is it simply uses the background and color options from the last tweet on a page. If you upload multiple embeds to one page, the system breaks but it works fine for just one. In those cases, the embeds look the same as they look on Twitter’s site.

This is, or at least could be, the most powerful element of this new feature and reason enough for most people to consider using it. However, there are many other good reasons to embrace this new method for quoting tweets.

Advantages for Bloggers

Without embedding, the only three options for citing a tweet in your profile is to:

1. Link to the Tweet: This requires a user click and is often missed when reading a long article.
2. Take a Screenshot: Grabbing an image of the tweet requires more time and can be a hindrance to visually impaired visitors.
3. Copy the Tweet: Copying the tweet destroys the formatting and wreak havoc with attribution.

None of these options are ideal and all require at least some sacrifice, either to the reader, the Twitter user or the person doing the quoting.

Embeds are a truly elegant solution to this problem. It’s a simple copy/paste HTML code fix, the formatting/attribution is preserved (complete with clickable links) and it looks good (when only pasting one tweet).

In short, if you’re a blogger or a Web site that is looking to cite some tweets, this may be the best solution you have, at least if you only have one tweet you want to cite.

Advantages for Twitter Users

If you’re a Twitter user, this is good news as well. This system preserves the formatting and attribution of your tweets, offers clickable links to your tweet and your Twitter account and includes your icon/branding. In short, readers will know the tweet belongs to you instantly and can follow up on it easily.

The biggest advantage, however, is that it may make sharing tweets more common, increasing exposure. Since the copyright risks are minimal with a single tweet and the tool is not geared to easily copy all of the tweets from one’s account, it is simply an excellent opportunity for promotion.

However, there are also concerns that I have with this tool and, though I don’t consider these to be deal-brakers, they are all things I would like to see fixed before the service is considered to be an official “feature”.

Concerns and Problems

To be completely fair, the author of the Twitter Media blog, Robin Sloan, has made it clear that this is an experiment and not a feature. As such, problems are bound to creep up. But in addition to the formatting issue I mentioned before, there are a few other issues I would like to raise.

1. In-The-Clear Text: The embeds keep the text in the clear. While SEO concerns are minimal due to the short number of characters, this does mean that the person doing the embedding could alter the words to make the tweet say just about anything. Though you can click the links and verify the the tweet, few will likely bother with that and it is also possible to change the links to make it appear that the tweet was simply deleted.




I’m really just a robot.less than a minute ago via webJonathan Bailey
plagiarismtoday

2. Mangled Backgrounds: If you use a custom Twitter background, as I do, the script seems to mangle your embeds. It would be nice if the script could pull from the center of the background and not the upper-lefthand corner, but in lieu of that it might be wise just to have all embeds use the same background or a solid color related to the profile.
3. Lengthy Code: Shorter code is already on the future feature list but the length of the code is rather large, especially when compared to YouTube or other embeds. It has a lot of in-line CSS that causes the interference with multiple embeds in the same page and can be a real pain to edit.

While these problems are pretty nasty, they can probably be fixed in future iterations, especially if Twitter decides this is a good idea and invests time and energy in making a true embedding service.

Bottom Line

All in all, this is a neat service and, in my opinion, a good idea. Quoting tweets is a common practice and, due to the nature of tweets, almost always allowed by copyright law. These embeds just make it easier to quote properly and ensures that the original author gets credit.

With a few fixes, I could easily see this experiment being integrated deep into Twitter’s product and would welcome that change.

In the meantime, if you’re only quoting one tweet on a page, give it a try. Otherwise, you’ll probably want to look at an alternate method for citing tweets in your posts, as you can see above.

Previously on this site I’ve talked about using PhotoDropper to make importing and attribution of Creative Commons-licensed Flickr images easier.

However, yesterday on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow requested a bookmarklet to create attribution lines for CC-licensed images. Earlier today, a user came through for him by making a simple “drag and drop” bookmarklet that you can add to your browser toolbar.

To use the bookmark, you simple navigate to the Flickr image you want to use (making sure it is CC-licensed) and then click the bookmarklet. You’ll be greeted with a popup that tells you to copy the HTML code that you then paste into your site/post below the image.

The only wrinkle in the bookmarklet is that it doesn’t 100% complete the license. It does not link to the actual CC license, though it does mention its name. This is hair-splitting but, considering it would be an easy fix I would still like it to be done (Note: I left a comment on the BoingBoing post about this but it hasn’t been put up yet).

Still, it is a great idea, especially for those who don’t use WordPress or would rather download and host the images themselves and not hotlinking off of Flickr’s servers (as PhotoDropper does). Other than that, I still largely prefer PhotoDropper as it formats the text better and uses the CC logo, making it a bit shorter of an attribution line.

For those who are interested in an even easier way, there is also a Flickr CC Attribution Helper script for Greasemonkey that places a textbox with the attribution code on every page. Though it can only be used with Firefox and with the Greasemonkey extension installed, for those using that system it may make a lot of sense.

However, this script neither mentions which CC license the work is being used under nor does it link to the license, just to the image and the user profile.

Still, either of these scripts will be better than most of the CC attribution that takes place, They both do a more complete job than most do on their own and I’m certainly almost anyone who licenses content under CC would be happy with the attribution as it does keep with the spirit of the license, if not the letter.

All in all, these are great ideas for citing Creative Commons works.

Recently, I’ve been seeing more and more guides on how to protect your content. It seems as if, after the new year, it’s an issue that more sites have been dealing with this issue and taking up publicly. Many of these guides have been linking to Plagiarism Today, which I am grateful for, but most have mentioned disabling right click as a good means of protecting your work.

Unfortunately, I take a very different view. Though I am all for taking reasonable steps to protect your work, especially tracking and license enforcement, the “No Right Click” script is not only a horrid waste of time, but a disaster for your readers.

While there may be certain limited uses for this method, which I’ll discuss later, if you use it on your site in general, you are inviting a backlash.

It’s time to reconsider the “No Right Click” script and to drop it. Both it and a similar script which prevents text selection need to stop being techniques included in these guides and below is why,

Why It’s Bad

To the right is a sample of a right click menu that opens up in Chrome for me when I right click on a blank part of a page. As you can see, there are many options there including back and forward, reload, print, save page, as well as a chance to view the page source or inspect the element.

If you do it on a link, you get other options including the ability to open it in a new tab, copy the link URL or save the link. Finally, if you do it on an image, you get still more options including the ability to copy the image URL or, as many fear, save it to your desktop.

Of all of the activities you can do on a right click, only a handful have any copyright infringing possibilities at all and, even then, most of their usefulness is non-infringing. The only uses that are worrisome is the ability to save an image or copy text. However, even then there are legitimate uses to consider carefully.

For example, with my 3 Count Column, I do a lot of copying and pasting. I copy names so I don’t risk misspelling them, I copy the title of the piece so the search engines know I’m linking to the original source and I, at times, copy short quotes. All of this is allowed usage under the law and I would imagine that most Webmasters would be happy about it as my summaries are brief and deliberately incomplete while the links are prominent.

However, without right click and text select this is almost impossible.

In the rare cases where I run across a site that actually uses one or both of these scripts, I simply move on to another source. This pains me to do so, especially when I’ve found a really good source for a news article, but it is what I have to do.

In short, the no-right-click script blocks dozens of legitimate and practical user functions to stop one that might be misused by a small number of users.

But even if that still sounds like a good trade, then comes in the real problem, that it doesn’t work at all.

A Porous Defense

On top of doing more to aggravate users than prevent infringement, it doesn’t work well for its intended function. Consider all of the ways to trivially defeat the no right click script with no special software or skills:

1. Drag and Drop: Drag and drop the image to your desktop or folder, no right click required. Probably the easiest way to defeat it.
2. Screen Capture Software: If you can see it on a screen, you can capture it with any number of screen capture applications. This includes software built in to most operating systems.
3. Disable JavaScript: If JavaScript is not running, the script won’t run and users can reenable all of their right click functions.
4. Viewing Source: For those who are more sophisticated, you can always view the source of the page and go directly to the image file, bypassing any JavaScript.
5. Save the Web Page: Finally, saving the entire Web page to your desktop, using the File->Save As function of your browser, enables users to download all of the images in a page without any JavaScript. From there they can find the one they want.

All of these ways are free, require only the OS and browser and are very widely know. A no right click script might stop some potential image thieves, but anyone with even a basic level of sophistication can get around meaning the actual number of thwarted users is likely very low.

In short, every misuse you do stop probably comes at the expense of dozens, if not hundreds of legitimate users who are frustrated away and other missed opportunities.

This means you’ll be doing far more to harm your work than help it.

Bottom Line

To be clear, this issue isn’t just limited to the no right click script. Digital Rights Management, or DRM, has proved to be ineffective and burdensome across the board. If movie and record companies with millions of dollars to throw at the problem can’t effectively protect their works, what hope does a few lines of JavaScript that are freely available on the Web?

Furthermore, if these scripts were a silver bullet against content theft, not only would they be more prevalent, but there would be no content misuse.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some cases where it can be of some use. Some gallery sites show large images in a separate popup, Placing the script in that popup might make sense, especially considering it’s just meant to be viewed and closed, but using it on an interactive part of a site is bound to cripple legitimate visitors.

As a Webmaster, you have to ask yourself which is the greater priority, stopping a handfull of undetermined and unskilled image downloaders or being a welcoming home to a large percentage of your legitimate visitors? I found the choice to be very simple and, considering I don’t see the script on many of the sites recommending it, I think others have come to the same conclusion as well.

These scripts need to die and, when they do, I’ll be the first to grab the shovel to help bury them.

WordPress users have long had plugins to extend their blogging platform in countless ways. And on Plagiarism Today we’ve talked about many plugins that work to protect your content including the Digital Fingerprint plugin and Copyfeed.

However, where most plugins have worked to protect your feed, a plugin by Chetan Gole entitled WP-CopyProtect wants to help you protect your content from those that would misuse it by visiting your site directly.

But while the plugin is very simple and easy to use, by the author’s own admission, it doesn’t do a great deal to stop content misuse and, in my opinion, is most likely a step backwards for most bloggers.

How it Works

WP-CopyProtect has two basic functions. The first is disabling right click on your site and the second is preventing text selection. To do this, it uses well-established (and widely hated) JavaScripts that the plugin will place into your site’s footer at the click of the mouse.

When you first install WP-CopyProtect, and visit the settings page, you’re given a screen with the option to enable or disable both right click text selection on your site. You can also select a specific warning that users will see when they try to right click on your site.

Once activated, the scripts do seem to work well enough as they are based upon well-established techniques. Though they can be defeated any number of ways, they do function as advertised.

However, if you enable the anti-text selection feature, the plugin adds a footer to your entire site that promotes the plugin. It seems to disappear if you turn off that particular feature, but there is no warning in the plugin itself that it does this and there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to either edit this footer, disable it or even style it.

Needless to say, I found this very annoying and frustrating. Especially since it provides links back to the original site that appear to be search-engine friendly, meaning that it could be viewed by Google as a form of spamming and hurt the blog’s PageRank.

This is extremely dangerous and, in my view, poor form to do so without warning or a means to remove it.

My Take

Using DRM on your site is a bad idea, period. These scripts will do little, if anything, to protect your content and will do a great deal to frustrate those who use your site legitimately.

Many, myself included, do a lot of navigation using the right click menu and there are many legitimate reasons to want to select text on a site. For every infringer that is hindered or thwarted, dozens of legitimate users will be hurt far worse.

The footer issue is also very troublesome to me. Though I am fine with plugin authors getting credit for their work, I may consider adding a page that lists the active plugins used on this site, adding a footer link without permission or any means of removal is poor form, especially considering how harmful it could be to users.

Despite all of this, I have to give Gole high marks for his honesty about his plugins limitations. He has the following statement both on the plugin’s page in the admin panel and a similar one on his own site.

This is just a basic copy protect plug-in, if someone want to copy your content he/she can go to source of the blog and can easily copy the stuff from there. Most copy cats use your blogs RSS feeds to steal the content. Always select “Summary” at “For each article in a feed, show” in WordPress admin panel “Reading Settings” so that even if someone try to copy your content from feeds he/she can not copy the whole post.

Gole also admits that he doesn’t use the plugin on his own site because he uses a CC license, which permits copying.

But even though Gole is honest about what his plugin’s limitations are, that doesn’t encourage me to recommend it, just further remind me why most people should stay away from it.

Bottom Line

I can’t think of many reasons why someone would want to use this particular plugin. There is almost no reason to use these scripts on your site and, if you do need them, it’s pretty trivial to search for them and paste them into your own HTML. It certainly isn’t much more difficult than using this plugin and there’s no footer to worry about.

All in all, though I want to encourage plugin developers to create tools that can help content creators track and prevent misuse, I think this was a misguided effort. Still, I have to go easy on the author because it is, according to him, his first plugin and it shows both an interest in this particular area as well as some potential.

On that note, there is a lot of promise for WordPress plugins in this area and that’s something I’m going to talk about tomorrow.

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.

Currently there are a lot of great products for tracking where your content appears on the Web. From veteran services like Copyscape to newcomers like FairShare, there are many compelling choices for tracking your content across the Web.

However, all of these services have a common limitation. Though they are great for picking up where your content is being used on other sites, they don’t and can’t measure how people are interacting with your content on your site. In short, they can’t tell you what people are copying and pasting on your home page nor can they help you ensure that your work is attributed.

But a new service called Tracer, brought to you by Tynt, can do exactly that. A simple JavaScript dropped into any Web page, Tracer can provide you with information about what text/images are being copied on your site and, in some cases, can help you track where it winds and even help ensure that attribution is affixed.

Though the system is in an early beta stage, it holds a great deal of promise and is worth looking at for Webmasters interested in understanding how their visitors are interacting with their work.

Not only can this provide valuable content protection information, but also valuable analytics information about popular articles and keywords on your site, in a way that search terms and just can’t manage.

What Tracer Does

Once you’ve registered for an account and been accepted into the beta, you are then given a single line of JavaScript code to place in your site’s theme. It can be put anywhere in your site’s HTML before the closing body tag. Once there, the script begins to work like other statistics packages, such as Google Analytics, but tracking a very different set of data.

(Note: Stats are from only a portion of one day and there seems to be a bug in my account preventing page views from showing.)

Currently, Tracer tracks four sets of data:

• Selections: This detects when a user has selected a portion of the page, such as highlighting a phrase or a sentence.
• Copies: This detects when a user actually copies an element on the page, whether it is a section of text or an image. Also breaks the text copies down between small copies, meaning less than seven words, and large ones.
• Linkbacks: Tracks where the content is pasted on the Web, more on this in a minute.
• Page Views: A standard statistic in that it tracks views of the individual pages of your site. Meant to be more of a “sanity check” and to aid in the calculation of some percentages (IE: Percent people who selected text on a page).

Tracer will let you take a look at the specific phrases that were copied, as well as show you break downs of the most popular keywords both in a list format and in a tag cloud.

The other element of the service that many will be excited about is that, when a copy of a section of text is made, Tracer automatically adds an attribution line. For example, if I copy the first paragraph from my previous column about FairShare entering public beta, it appears like this:

Attributor’s individual-targeted FairShare service, previously covered here, has announced today that the service is now open to the public, no beta keys are required.
Read more: “FairShare Enters Public Beta | PlagiarismToday” – http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/03/04/fairshare-enters-public-beta/#ixzz08tla2ShX

Obviously, this is a raw paste without any formatting on my part. It also allows you to see that the URL has a “#” element added to the end of it, which allows Tracer to monitor incoming links and report those in the “linkback” column of the dashboard.

All in all, if you’re a Webmaster that is interested in seeing how users are interacting with your content, there are a lot of compelling reasons to give Tracer a try.

Potential Uses

When you first log into your Dashboard, you’re greeted with a very glossy animation showing thumbmails of your site floating amid the list if recent copied phrases. Though the animation is attractive and interesting, it is ultimately fairly useless, even though it allows you to click through to a highlighted version of your page showing the passage that was copied.

Instead, the real power of Tracer is in the boring, dry data buried within the body of the dashboard, including the list of top keywords, the tag cloud and the most popular URLs with a table of actions taken.

With this information, there are two different approaches users could take with the service:

1. Analytics: The most powerful use, for most bloggers and other creators, will likely be the analytics element of it. You can use Tracer to track what keywords are the most popular on your site and what pages are getting the highest level of interaction in terms of selection and copying. This can be used to make decisions about future content to create or choosing which pages to promote.
2. Copy Protection: Though Tracer doesn’t do anything to prevent copying, meaning it is not a DRM system, it can tell you what posts are being copied the most heavily. This sets those pages up for greater scrutiny, points to sites that are using your content with links, and tells you what images are the most popular among those who are seeking to copy photos. This can help you identify which content needs the most attention and also help you find some uses you might have missed otherwise.

For most, it seems likely that the analytical aspect of the service will be the most meaningful, especially with the service set up as it is. But those who are interested in seeing how their content is being used, it might be compelling as a supplement to other services.

Either way though, there are some serious limitations and problems that need to be weighed before using the service for either purpose, especially considering that some visitors may be unnerved by the way the service works.

Drawbacks and Concerns

Almost certainly long-time readers of this site have already begun to predict many of the problems with Tracer. By being a JavaScript system, it makes itself vulnerable to a series of limitations and issues that may be a deal-breaker for some webmasters.

Consider the following:

1. No RSS Support: Since Tracer is a JavaScript and most RSS readers do not support the language, it will not and can not work on RSS feeds. For bloggers that likely get much of their readership and interaction through RSS feeds, not to mention face the most serious content scraping issues via RSS, this can be a huge hole in the monitoring.
2. No Detection Without Attribution: Tracer can only detect uses of copied content if the copy remains wholly intact, complete with attribution. If the attribution is removed or modified, Tracer can’t see the link and will only detect the initial copy with no information about where it went.
3. User Discomfort: Though Web surfers have grown accustomed to being monitors by traffic packages such as Google Analytics, Tracer also tracks and modifies their copy/paste function. It does so without any warning that I could perceive (possibly could be just my browser) and many users may be put off by this. If you have any thoughts on this, please leave a comment as I’ll be very interested to hear.
4. Increased Load Times: Though, in my testing, Tracer always seemed to load fast on PT, you are still calling a JavaScript from a remote server. It is easy to see how this could increase the load time of a site, especially if something goes wrong on Tracer’s end.
5. Lack of Options: Though the feature set is still being fleshed out, there are a lot of options that aren’t available at this time, including the ability to switch off the automatic addition of attribution, changing the definition of a “short” copy, etc. At this time, the only “option” is the ability to change your password.

Though some of these issues may likely be addressed in future updates of the serivce, especially the lack of options and, possibly, the load time issue if Tynt decides to create plugins for Tracer, but the issues with RSS tracking and possible user discomfort will likely remain.

The question is going to be how are Webmasters going to use Tracer and will it justify the potential drawbacks?

Conclusions

Tracer, in my opinion, has a great deal of potential. Though it will never be a replacement for other content tracking tools such as FairShare and Copyscape, it may be a good supplement. Especially compelling is its ability to track image copying in addition to text copying and its ability to detect what is going on the site itself, rather than waiting for copies to show up in various search engines.

I have Tracer installed on Plagiarism Today currently. So feel free to play with it as a visitor and see what you think of it from that perspective (It will also help me test the back end). I may not keep it however, I am not very comfortable with the idea of messing with people’s copy/paste function without clear warning and since it can’t be switched off independently, I’ll likely remove it altogether in a few days until that option is added.

In the end, my thought on the service is that it holds a great deal of promise but, at this time, isn’t really mature enough to widely recommend, especially for bloggers. If you operate a non-RSS Web site or don’t see a lot of RSS scraping, such as with a store, photo gallery, etc. it may be great to get some “on the ground” information about what is going on when people visit your site. For RSS-heavy sites, the information will likely be incomplete and the risks may not justify the novelty of it.

For most, this will be far more useful as an analytic service rather than a copy detection/protection one. However, it is easy to see how, with some work, it could become a nice compliment to existing copy detection products.

If nothing else, Tynt has definitely created a unique product with Tracer and it has a lot of reasons for Webmasters to be hopeful. It may not be up to its potential right now, but it is a service well worth watching.

photo credit: Keyser_ Soze

It happens about once per month. I get an email a software programmer who believes that he or she has developed the perfect DRM solution. They send me the usual promotional copy about how great their product is and why I should promote it on this site.

Even though my faith in DRM as a solution to content theft issues has been completely shattered, it is hard for me to not get my hopes up a little bit. However, they are almost immediately dashed every time as I test the solution.

Usually within a few minutes I’m breaking the DRM scheme and emailing back the person their “protected” sample image. Though I offer a detailed analysis of how I was able to perform the feat and offer suggestions on how to improve the product, I never hear back from them.

This is in stark contrast to detection and licensing companies, such as Copyscape that have listened to my issues and made changes to fix them. In fact, many of these companies go on to become paid clients to take even further advantage of my beta testing and trouble shooting.

The DRM guys, however, disappear, They almost always resist even a simple email exchange and never defend their product against the flaws that I find.

This is not to say that all DRM schemes are unscrupulous, just that I have serious questions about the ones who have approached me. If there is a DRM solution out there that works, I want to find it and I want to give a chance to the legitimate DRM problem solvers to get their products reviewed.

However, to ensure that the playing field is fair, I’ve created a simple DRM challenge. A format by which any image DRM solution provider can submit their product, have it reviewed on this site and, potentially, win the prize of free advertising.

The rules are below.

The Big Idea

The big idea of this challenge is fairly simple. If there is a magic DRM solution out there, I want to feature it on this site. I haven’t found it yet and, currently, do not believe it exists, but I would love nothing more than to be proved wrong.

So, I wanted to give every DRM producer a chance to have their technology tested and reviewed on this site under a standard set of rules. If anyone can meet my criteria and beat all of my efforts to break your DRM, then I am offering a month of free advertising on this site (delivered in the form of a 200×200 button near the top of the sidebar), bearing in mind this site does not currently show ads, as well as a text link at the footer in the RSS feed for a week.

To get the prize though, you must meet the following rules.

How It Works

The premise of the challenge is easy. If you are a DRM solution creator and would like to take me up on the challenge, what you first need to do is email me with the following things:

1. General information about your DRM solution, including name, how it works and any promotional information you wish to include
2. A logo or other graphic to include in my review (if applicable)
3. A link to an image that is protected using your technology

Please bear in mind that, right now, this is ONLY for image DRM solutions for simplicity reasons.

Once I have that email, when I am able to, I will attempt to break your DRM and email you either your image or the critical parts of it. To do this, I will bring a series of tools to bear including, but not limited to, the following:

1. Source code snooping
2. Browser tricks
3. Screen capture tools
4. Decompiler programs
5. File extractors

If I am unable to break the DRM in a reasonable amount of time, approximately one hour of work (Note: the work may actually be over a period of many hours due to my schedule) I will then turn the system over to a friend that is even more savvy about breaking DRM and give them the same chance.

(Note: If you are interested in helping to break image DRM schemes, send me an email to jonathan@plagiarismtoday.com and let me know. I have some people in mind but if there are a lot of applicants I may need more people to keep the line moving.)

If the DRM system survives both attempts to break it and meets my other criteria, then it wins the challenge.

It is that simple.

Usability Criteria

However, since it is easy to lock down an image so that no one can get to it, including a legitimate viewer, I’m also laying out a series of usability criteria any such system must meet.

1. No software install to view
2. Must work on Mac, Windows and Linux
3. Must work in at least IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera
4. Ideally, legitimate users should not even be aware of the DRM in place but the DRM should definitely not hinder normal viewing in any significant way
5. It can not incorporate watermark as the goal of DRM is to prevent copying, not reduce effectiveness of any copies made

Please bear in mind that these are not absolutely all of the guidelines in this area and that any DRM that greatly hinders regular viewing of a file could be disqualified from the ultimate prize.

It will be up to me and readers that I poll whether or not a DRM system hinders viewing too greatly.

(Note: I am on the fence about slideshow systems such as Slideroll. Though these systems are relatively secure, they do hinder viewing of the images and have other vulnerabilities. I am seeking artist feedback on whether to allow such systems into the challenge.)

Other Rules

Before we go any further, here are a few miscellaneous rules to the challenge.

1. You must be the creator or a representative of an image DRM system to apply. Users can not nominate a system for the challenge (but can suggest them to me informally for outreach).
2. Once I have completed my testing of your system, I will email you with the results. You will have a 48 hour period to respond. If you don’t reply in that time, I will publish my article without your commentary.
3. All systems submitted, whether they complete the challenge or not will be reviewed on this site, possibly including a screencast. By submitting your service, you agree to allow me to do so.

In short, if you submit a DRM system for this challenge and it is trivially broken or creates a horrible user experience, the world will know about it.

Objections and Questions

Finally, here are the answers to some of the more common questions/concerns many will have regarding this challenge.

This is impossible! No system can do this!

I’m on record saying that I agree. No image DRM system I have seen has been able to balance usability and provide good protection. Please bear in mind that I am not some kind of elite hacker or tech guru, I’m just a computer-savvy Webmaster with a lot of experience testing image DRM.

If your system can not survive my test then there is no way it will survive on the Web. The image only has to be jailbroken once for it to be all over the Web.

The inclusion of screenshots as a means to break DRM is unfair, those are low-resolution images.

This argument is suspect to me for many reasons.

First, there is no reason to post high-resolution images on the Web unless they are intended for printing. Posting extremely high-resolution images is, usually, a waste of bandwidth.

Second, as was shown during the first round of concern with Photobucket, low resolution images can still be used very successfully in prints.

Third, screen shot tools are almost universal now, built into every major operating system. It is the first way many amateur image plagiarists obtain an image.

Finally, the most common use for an illegally-copied image is on another Web site, for that, a screenshot is more than adequate.

Do you have to get the whole image?

No. I look at it from the artist’s perspective. If I can get the bulk of the image, enough to virtually replace the original work, then I will consider that a failure.

Though such omissions might help prove which image is the original, it doesn’t help the artist keep their work from spreading. However, there will be a note in my review that I was not able to get the full image.

What if my system doesn’t meet your usability criteria?

You can still apply to be reviewed, just understand that even if I can not break your DRM, you will not win the challenge. I realize that there may be works and artists that find such a trade off rewarding so I will not bar such products from this site, though I will be honest about any such issues.

What if my system doesn’t prevent copying but tracks it?

Those systems are not designed for this challenge. If you have such a system you wish me to look at, let me know. However, it is not eligible right now for this challenge. More on this later.

What if my system is commercial?

That is not an issue, I will mention the price in my review but so long as there is no charge for me to test it, I will not object. Such systems are still eligible to win.

When is the deadline?

There is none. This is an open-ended challenge until either someone wins or I decide to close it down. If I receive too many entries at once I may put a temporary halt on new submissions.

I will announce changes/closures on this page.

A Word About Rule Changes

I am writing these rules a bit by the seat of my pants. Remember this, the spirit of the competition is to create a DRM system for images that is both user-friendly to legitimate viewers but also difficult to impossible for a prepared computer-savvy user to break.

Please keep your submissions in the spirit of the competition.

I will likely be posting minor rule changes to this page over the coming days. If I have to change a rule between the time you submit an entry and when I test it, I will email you to let you know of the changes and make sure you agree.

I don’t expect anything drastic to change.

Ask Questions

I encourage people to post questions about the contest in the comments form below so that I can give public answers. If you have a question that is specific to your system email it to jonathan at plagiarismtoday dot com.

Enter

If you want to enter the challenge and agree to all of the mess above, send me an email with the required elements to jonathan at plagiarismtoday dot com and I will let you know when to expect met to start work.

Thank you very much for your time and patience with this. I sincerely hope that there is a holy grail of image DRM out there and would love nothing more than to be proved wrong.

Bear in mind that, if such a system has been created, this challenge would not even be the beginning of what the creator could do. With so many artists clamoring for a means to control their images, such a system would almost certainly lead to much greater things.

On that note, I look forward to being challenged and to seeing what creative solutions the programmers of the world have come up with.

Unfortunately, there is no magic solution. If one did exist, Plagiarism Today would not be here and there would not be thousands, possibly millions, of content creators having their works lifted right now.

However, this doesn’t stop people from trying and the DRM crowd loves to talk about disabling right click, preventing text selection or embedding copy into images as viable means to prevent people from stealing your content.

Sadly though, these techniques can only, at best, slow the rate of content theft, not stop it. Worse still, they can be very disruptive to your site and, over the long run, will do nothing to actually protect your content.

But if you think it can’t hurt anything to try it and need a good reason not to, I’ll do four better and give you five.

Top Five

There are many reasons not to use DRM on your site, but here are five ways that it can directly sabotage your Web presence and the very work you are trying to protect:

1. Search Engine Issues: If you embed your content into an image or use a strange script to protect your content from being copied, you could also be protecting it from the search engines since search engine spiders don’t have all the capabilities of a modern browser. The end result is that no one will steal your content because no one will be able to find it. If you insist on using DRM, at least do a search engine spider check and see if your content is still visible to crawlers.
2. Accessibility: Users who are visually impaired can be hindered from visiting your site by embedding text into images and by certain script-based tricks. In addition to potentially being a violation of the law, this can put off a very sizable segment of the population that are, by in large, very heavy Internet users.
3. Mobile Browsing: With cell phones and PDAs being used increasingly to browse the Web, it is important to think about access from them. They often lack advanced javascript features and can not display large images. DRM tricks designed for the desktop world can sabotage mobile viewing, making your site completely unreadable on portable devices.
4. Usability: Large Web companies often invest tens of thousands of dollars trying to find out how to make their sites easier to use. However, DRM universally sabotages usability by punishing users for doing things that are natural to them including right click to go back, selecting text to hold their place and changing fonts to make the text easier to read. Though some DRM might be invisible to the user, it is pretty much impossible for DRM to actually help them.
5. Networking: If you want to encourage other sites to link to you and include you in their articles, they are going to need to gain access to small portions of your content. Unfortunately, DRM is mostly an all-or-nothing approach so sites can not copy quotes for legitimate use. This encourages Webmasters to look for other resources for their articles.

If these seem like serious drawbacks, that is because they are. DRM can cripple an otherwise good site and all of what amounts to almost no improvement in the security of one’s content.

The irony of the situation is that, if one is posting their content to a blog and distributing it through an RSS feed, it is most likely the case that the vast majority of content theft is taking place through that feed and not the site itself. In those situations, putting DRM on the site does not address the bulk of the issue.

This is not to say that DRM has no place at all on the Web. I’ve seen some very limited applications when dealing with images that made sense, such as ones that open in their own popup window, but the application is far more limited than any of the fans of DRM seem to be ready to admit.

Digital Rights Assignment

Rather than trying to manage digital rights through technology, others have taken to digital rights assignment. These techniques instead focus on attaching Copyright Management Information (CMI) and trying to ensure that the information travels with it.

Examples of this include watermarks on images, copyright notices in RSS feeds and Numly numbers on articles. These methods are far less intrusive to users of the site and can provide some protection against misuse by both offering clear licenses for the work to be used under and a means to track it as it is passed around on the Web.

Though these techniques may not stop all content theft, they are not designed to. They instead provide readers, copyright holders and users of the work information about the work and let the copyright holder decide if and how to act on an infringement.

Conclusions

DRM, for the most part, is a fool’s errand. Movie studios and record labels have invest millions of dollars in DRM systems to protect their DVDs and CDs. They’ve planted rootkits on people’s computers and have put DRM directly into the operating systems we use.

Yet, at every turn, those DRM schemes have been defeated, often with explosive consequences. If the greatest minds in computers, with decades of experience in encryption and security, can not produce a viable DRM scheme, what chance does a few lines of code on a Web page have?

DRM doesn’t work and using it can cripple your Web site and hinder your legitimate users. If we’re going to move forward to a better Web for all artists, we need to accept that and focus on techniques that produce results.

Fortunately, such techniques already exist, they just aren’t the pretty “magic bullets” everyone wishes they were.

Anti-DRM Image by Nim and is used under a Creative Commons License

It is a bold initiative and, to help achieve that goal, Mahalo has created a simple javascript bookmarklet to look for plagiarized or duplicate content. The idea is that, by helping its human editors detect unoriginal content, they can better filter out unwanted sites from their results pages.

However, the tool they created is not just available to editors at the Mahalo site, but to anyone that might find use for it. But even though it’s not a powerful enough tool to warrant relying on it solely, there is enough is more than enough to make it a useful addition for any plagiarism-fighter’s toolbox.

How it Works

The idea behind the Mahalo tool is very simple. You add a bookmarklet, which is really a snippet of JavaScript code, to your browser’s bookmark bar. You then visit a site that you want to check for plagiarism, either for being plagiarized or for being a plagiarism, select a small block of text and then click the bookmarklet. You will be whisked away to a Google search result for the text you just selected.

The results are returned instantly and with Google’s typical reliability. Though the results will only be as good as the text that is selected, it is still the fastest way I know of to search the largest and most complete collection of Web sites available.

The idea is very simple and all the bookmarklet really does is save the steps of copying the text into your search box and adding the quotes. However, even though it only saves a few seconds per search, people who want to quickly use Google to check large volumes of work will likely find the bookmarklet useful.

Sadly enough, that might be a larger audience than anyone thinks.

Who It’s For

Very likely, this tool will find a place for blog editors and others responsible for posting the works of others on their sites. Though a tool such as iPlagiarismCheck (Note: See this article about iPlagiarismCheck before registering.) would be much better for more a thorough analysis of the content, this can provide an initial on a submission or a way to do checks in between more thorough inspections.

Also, bloggers might find this tool useful to do spot checks of their own works. Since creating Google Alerts is prohibitive time-wise for blog entries, Mahalo’s bookmarklet can be used to randomly inspect works and check for scraping/spam blogging whenever you have a free moment. Since it is present in your browser, there is even a reminder to perform such checks from time to time.

Finally, it can also be used by people who are investigating allegations of plagiarism. It would make it very easy, for example, a forum owner to check all of the works posted by a suspicious user. It could also help Webmasters check the other works of a plagiarist to see who or what else they might have ripped off.

In short, there’s a wide variety of people who may be interested in this rather simple bookmarklet. It certainly is not a major step forward in fighting plagiarism, but every improvement is a welcome one.

Conclusions

Personally, I don’t really see Mahalo’s tool replacing anything else out there. It really is nothing more than a shortcut to a Google search.

That being said, any short cut that doesn’t harm the end results is a shortcut worth taking. This definitely meets that criteria.

In the end, there is no reason not to install the bookmarklet in your browser, unless your bookmarks bar is already overflowing, so it makes sense to go ahead and grab it, even if it is only to play with it.

If nothing else, this tool shows that Mahalo is taking a serious look at these issues and is taking steps to keep their site filled with original content. The fact that others may derive some usefulness from their tool is just icing on the cake.

Hat Tip: Thanks to Andy Beard for tipping me off to this tool.