Blocking PrintScreen

dmcreations · December 14, 2006

Forgive me if this has been covered already, but I thought I'd like to share. I did a quick search for some terms, but didn't find quite what I was looking for.

It seems there is a pretty simple trick you can do with Flash that lets you overwrite your systems clipboard memory with your own message. Effectively this would stop somebody from capturing your images with the Print Screen button. I've done this on my smugmug site, and from what I can tell it seems to work quite well. Only thing is the SWF file needs to be hosted on a different website somewhere.

The Flash code for how to do this:

this.onEnterFrame = function(){
System.setClipboard("All images Copyright © 2006 Me. All rights reserved.");
}

A link to the webpage where I found this trick:

http://blog.gilluminate.com/?b=20060425123338

Gotcha: As long as the Flash applet is running in the browser, even if you have switched to working in another program, the clipboard will continue to be overwritten. Maybe a little javascript to detect if the browser window is active would solve this?

03FatBoy · December 19, 2006

I'd be most interested in this. Especially if someone could figure the JS code as mentioned above.

ivar · December 19, 2006

Personally, I think this is quite sucky because you will overwrite everything in the clipboard, for all users at all times. I use the clipboard a lot helping out people with customization and other things. If they would have this installed, I probably wouldn't be able to help them. Plus, a flash-player needs to be installed, and if you don't remove the default refresh rate of flash, it will be done a lot 12(?) times a second.

Andy · December 19, 2006

DO NOT use this code if you care about your visitors. There is a faq in our sticky faq on disabling the IE print toolbar.

dmcreations · December 19, 2006

Since having tried this on my site, I now agree with Andy. It's far too invasive. If there was a way to clear the clipboard in a way that is limited to only when your web page is the active window, then that might be useful. Another approach might be to test the clipboards content on page focus, then again on page blur. If the content is different, then clear the clipboard. Right now though I don't think that's possible. I don't know if there exists a 'mature' way of doing this.

Franco · January 1, 2007

Andy wrote:

DO NOT use this code if you care about your visitors. There is a faq in our sticky faq on disabling the IE print toolbar.

I'm new to all of this and still customizing my web site currently, but I've been using your helpful information Andy (as well, as the friendly posts provided by others as well). I did add the codes mentioned in the sticky, but I didn't notice anything. Maybe I'm not understanding how it functions.

Nevertheless, I too would be interesting in knowing a friendly way of disabling the Ctrl PrintScreen function. As I've seen that I can use this function to paste photos from my website into various programs and print them with no problem. I don't want to use the watermarking function as I think it would turn off most customers on purchasing prints.

Has anyone been able to come up with a solution that wouldn't hinder SmugMug support or others from continuing to provide us help?

Thanks for all that you do! I'm still working on my web site, but it is getting there little by little with everyone's helpful coding information on here.

Take care and Happy New Year!

Andy · January 1, 2007

Welcome, Franco

Blocking PrintScreen

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