Volition

Darren pointed these guys out to me: Encryptionz. They claim to "encrypt" web pages so that people and bots cannot steal your content. Pfft!

Ignoring the fact they do not even use encryption, they can't stop someone manually copying and pasting stuff out of their browser window. They cannot stop a bot loading the page and unencoding the content and using it. As is, the content on the page cannot be indexed by a search engine. Or, if it can, then it can get ripped by a normal bot anyway. Lastly, and by no means least, it is unreadable by people who have Javascript disabled or are using a browser that does not support Javascript.

As I said, the content is not encrypted - it is encoded as hexadecimal ASCII characters. This can be read by a computer as easily as any english-speaking reader can read this post. It is quite ludicrous really, it offers no protection for your content at all.

The general rule of thumb is if: If you do not want people to copy something, do not put it on the Internet. If you do, slap a copyright notice on it, keep an eye out for it, and sue anyone you catch copying your content.

An interesting method for catching content thieves would be to follow what street directory companies are doing. They insert extraneous streets into their maps so that if you copy one, you copy their fake streets as well and they can catch you out. So what you do is insert unique words or catch-phrases into your website content. Misspellings would most likely be caught by yon content thief, but common-sounding, yet unique phrases that do not contain specific or proprietary information would likely not be caught. Google for these whole phrases and if it brings back sites other than yours - it is time to investigate. This process could even be automated by using the Google API.

Interestingly, if someone in the United States examines this "product", they might be committing a federal crime by circumventing a copy-protection mechanism. Whoops. The funny thing is, if you are a publically listed company, then it is illegal for you to not examine the security offered by a security product - you would not have performed appropriate due dilligence. It would also be illegal if you did examine the security of the product because of the DMCA. So either way; go to jail - go directly to jail, unless you are the directory of a large company. Such is the way of the land of the "free".