Preventing copying of web site

[The Magus]

Good Day:

I have a program "WTTrack" with which I can download (mirror) a site which will give me a duplicate of the site including links and photos.

How would one stop someone from copying a site?

Is there some code that could be placed in the "head" of the index page which would prevent a program such as this from following the links?

The point of all this is that I am now in a bit of a dispute with the person for whom I am working. She is of the opinion that she owns the 520 pages on the site even though I have not been paid for them.

I want to prevent her or someone else from "nicking" this site until we sort out the terms of the contract i.e. if she wants to pay me she can have the site lock stock and barrel but if not I propose to wipe out all my pages and upload the 139 pages that were on the site when I began work on it.

Any "stoppage" would be temporary until we solve the money problem.

Thanks in advance.

Jack

[Charles]

Burn the site to a CD and take the CD and your own laptop to your next meeting with the "client". And never let that CD out of your control until you have the money.

[The Magus]

Thanks but I guess I did not make it clear that the site is up and running on line.
I have written the site over the past year on a commission basis but now the owner wants to change the terms of the contract and I disagree strongly. As I have come to learn over the past year she is not above having someone else down load the site and change the user name and password etc taking control of the complete site. I would like to block it so no one can down load the complete site as I can do with WTTrack. Okay, they can always down load a few pages but 520 pages would take forever. Guess they would be welcome to it if they did that but it would take a long time to follow all the individual links to make sure it was complete.

Thanks for help so far.

Jack

[the tree]

Well, in short no. You either allow it to be downloaded by people and spiders like "WTTrack" or not at all.

[pratik_learner]

Perhaps using .htaccess might a be trick but before you try out with that why not add a copyright notice in the form of comments and then remove them using a search-and-replace program with a space(remeber HTML ignores whitespaces)!

[Felixcat]

I agree,

By adding a copyright notice you have right on the content, unless your current agreement states otherwise. You should consult a copyright laywer or some expert in this field.

I can direct you to a ZAR company specilising in cyber law.
http://www.buys.co.za

Good luck!

[Stephen Philbin]

Aye. If you've already handed over the work and it's on her host machine then there's nothing you can do code wise. You can't tinker with htaccess because it's her server and even if you could, she could just change it back. Same with adding copyright notices to your pages. She can just delete them too. As far as I can see, legal action is your only option. Failing that, there are always much less ethical ways of preventing the site from running your work............

[The Magus]

Hi:

I noticed one reply which mention the owners ability to delete and alter etc - at the moment she does not have the FTP user name and password - well, she has them but won't know what to do with them as they will buried deeply in her incoming e-mails. I am concerned that someone else at her request could copy the site and then she would contact the server people and have the user name and password changed so she could upload the site again - complete etc.

I am trying to arrange it so she cannot copy the site for a short time - once we reach an agreement (if we do) I would then remove the restriction on the spiders or what ever one calls programs such as WTTtrack. I understand that I would be stopping search engines at the same time but don't think that is a big issue just now.

Will take some time to digest the other replies.

Thanks for your help so far

Jack

[Nevermore]

Why not just take down 90% of the pages - replace them with stubs explaining that you'll hand over the site properly when paid. If she continues not to pay you'll have to consult a lawyer.

[Natdrip]

Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing and Ethical Guidelines?
is a book that has contracts in it that if you use and are apart of the guild "the price of the handbook, has a mail in card" they will be your council for free. ie check it out!!! :D

<a href="bigfile.zip">Foo</a>

<script language="javascript">
<!--
document.write('<a h' + 're' + 'f="');
document.write('bigfile' + '.' + 'zip">');
// -->
</script>
Foo
</a>
there is more here:

Abuse FAQ for webmasters
How to limit network abuse
HTTrack Website Copier FAQ (updated - DRAFT)

http://www.httrack.com/html/abuse.html#WEBMASTERS

http://forum.httrack.com/readmsg/6772/index.html



how is the site constructed?

<asp>?
<Html>?
<vbscript>?
<javascript>?
<access>?

do you have access to the server?

if so stop the web service ie. iis

[The Magus]

I am slowly beginning to realize there are a lot of brilliant people out there in the big wide world when I see the depth of knowledge that some of the respondees (???) must have.

Thanks to Natdrip for his reply and references - I will have to study them before deciding if I understand them.

In reply to two questions - the site is constructed in HTML and I am sure of the meaning of "stop the site. iis".

Does this means to close the site which I could by putting up a "under construction" page as the index page but this would probably create more fireworks then necessary.

I, hopefully, would like to stop anyone from copying the site without her knowing that I have done this while we are still talking. Once the talking is over and done I could remove the restriction or blow up the site. I just don't want her to prepare for the blow up by having a copy of the whole site.

By the way, I am located in Turkey where one doesn't have all the resources to legal action as one might eleswhere especially as I am not a Turkish speaker - legalize is confusing enough when it is written in one's mother tongue without trying to work it out in another language.

Cheers and thanks for all the help.

Jack

[cheapgary]

I'm not any expert or anything but if this lady is jerking you around you need to take back control. Pull the plug on her site now. Change the password. Rename the index page to disable it. Whatever wasn't clarified before needs to be settled by your policies not hers. Tell her what the rules are and then walk away. If she doesn't concede take down the site. Put up the old site and quit her. Get on with your other work and don't look back. The amount of time you put into indulging her will cost you in the end. Next time do it differently.

Just my $.20.

Regards,
Gary Smith

[The Magus]

Thanks to everyone who responded. I took the action suggested by Gary and uploaded the original site as I found it in Jun 04 in addition to sending the owner an e-mail outlining my demands for payment on a commission basis and also offering to sell the copyright to the site I wrote.

I have pointed out the absence of the site does neither of us any good and will await her response.

Thanks again and keep up the good work.