Internet Marketing | Lead Generation

why disabling right click is not a good idea….

As a website owner, it is always a bit frustrating when you find other websites cloning or copying your work. The most common of these is of course STEALING images.

I had an interesting experience the other day when I found a website with several images that I own on it - including an image of my own conservatory at home. (Yes, the conservatory on my own home) Interestingly - the thief after stealing the image from me had decided to disable RIGHT CLICK on this website. When you right click on the image a notice came up that says “© Copyright!”

The cheek of it!! In theory they were trying to stop someone stealing my image of their website.

Despite the legalities of this situation - what this thief did not realise is several things:

1) It is actual very easy to get around “disable right click” - takes literally seconds to do, so for a determined thief, no protection at all. (I am not going to explain here, but try a search in any search engine, and you will soon find out)

2) Many people use right click in their normal surfing activity - not just for stealing images - and frankly it is an insult to those people, to offend them by having silly COPYRIGHT WARNINGS popping up al the time.

3) It actually does you harm in other ways also. The following is the BIG ONE for me as it actually lowers your user friendliness. I am the editor for several web directories - who’s job is to review web submissions or find additional websites to add to the directory. Now I am not saying I’m lazy - but it is common for editors to copy and paste some website copy prior to editing and adding to a directory. (A directory, which if you are listed in it, will bring you more traffic). Most editors I know, if they find Right Click is disabled, which prevents them copy and pasting, will just move on to the next website and not bother to list the “offending” right click disabled website

Do you see websites like Google, Yahoo, Amazon etc disabling RIGHT CLICK? Of course not! Now if they are not doing it, perhaps there are good reasons for that.

Frankly when I find websites disabled - I think Amateur / Gimmick - and someone who is pretty naive - if they think that stops their content being copied.

Of course stealing content is wrong - but using Disable Right Click to stop it is not the way to FIX it.

Another day, I may just talk about more effective ways to enforce copyright protection - but for the moment, unless you want to be considered an amateur - do not disable Right Click.