How to Prevent Site Theft

Preventing Content Theft
1. Check the search engines for stolen text or articles. Copy and paste a section of the original text into the search engine. Put the section of original text in quotes. Review the results of the search for other Web sites with very similar (plagiarized) content, or a copy of the exact text. Another option is to send the text, or the Web page URL, through CopyScape. This will bring up a listing of sites with a significant amount of words being copied.
2. Turn in Web sites guilty of copyright infringement. Contact the hosting company of any sites that have stolen your content. Send a copy of the content removal request to the owner of the site also. If you do not hear back from the hosting company within two weeks, report the site to Google's Spam Report, and other major search engines. If the content thief is using Google AdSense, or other PayPerClick services, for illegal activities (such as stolen content/images), report the site.

3. Disable copy, paste and right-click options. Insert JavaScript into your site to prevent copy, paste and right-clicking without your permission. Wordpress blog users can simply download plug-ins to automatically disable these options.
4. Create a clear policy that states your site does not tolerate content theft. Insert a 'Do Not Copy,' or 'Protected by CopyScape,' banner on every page of your site to scare off potential content thieves. Write a detailed section of text in your Privacy Policy indicating that the Web site is copyrighted, and not open to re-distribution.
Preventing Image Theft
5. Place a visual copyright watermark on your images. Image watermarks can range from a full symbol across the picture, to a small section of text in the corner of the image. Create a copyright watermark in Photoshop, or other image creation tool. Include the copyright holder's name, date of copyright, and the rights management (eg. Creative commons type license). Make the watermark slightly transparent to allow visitors of your site to clearly see the image.
6. Use a low resolution image to protect against image theft. Images that are 550 pixels, should be saved at 72 dpi when used on the Internet. This will prevent the image from being re-sized without creating a grainy effect.
7. Disable copy, paste and right-click options. Insert JavaScript into your site to over-ride browser clicks. Prevent downloads of images by placing pictures as a background to tables using CSS code. While right-click downloads will still be functional with this method, the downloaded image will appear transparent to the image thief.
8. Stop search engines from indexing your protected images. Insert a META tag to prevent search engines from indexing your images, while still allowing them to put the rest of the page in their search listings. JavaScript can be added into the root directory of the site to tell 'bots,' or spyders, to disregard the image directory of your site. All major search engines should honor your request to remove your images from public searches.