hatkirby

Never mind, the case was a bit urgent and my tumblr has been deleted now and it doesn’t matter anyway.

If anyone’s still interested, I put up the source code to my scraper here: https://other.fourisland.com/antihoudini.phps . To run it, rename it to “antihoudini.php” and upload it to the root of a PHP-enabled web server. You can delete it once you’ve tried it.

Okay, I’m sorry, I just realized that my screen scraping program won’t work because my server doesn’t allow outbound connections to most sites. I could put it up for download, though, and you could run it on your own server.

It wouldn’t actually be that difficult to write a screen scraper for a Houdini-protected page because we have intrinsic knowledge about the site: it runs WordPress. Please wait while I go write my scraper. *writes*

Okay, I’m back. The scraper was not too difficult to write, but because I am not intent on stealing your content (just on proving a point), I didn’t spend too much time on it and it’s not guaranteed to always work. However, you can try it here: Hatkirby’s Screen Scraper. I’m not certain how the screen scraper makes Houdini “better”, though.

@voyagerfan5761 Thanks! I look forward to your post too, and not just because you said you liked mine. ?? And you are able to edit your posts, but only for a certain amount of time, it seems.

@phkcorp2005 I use Google Chrome. How ’bout that? ?? And I see you have no response to my comment about webpage source code.

The context menu isn’t the only way to access the source code of a page from a web browser. Even if we disregard the fact that the source code of a webpage can be accessed in many, many ways, there is still the fact that, in every major browser, you can view the source of the webpage from a non-context menu. In Chrome, it is under the Page menu, in Firefox, View. (I’m not sure about IE because I haven’t used it in such a long time) The fact is, disabling the context menu is one of the most useless ways to prevent a user from doing something because, by definition, the context menu exists solely to make accessing certain commands and options easier. There should never be anything in a context menu that isn’t invokable from another location such as a non-context menu.

If you would like, I will personally write a screen scraper program like the ones content thieves use to download content illegally and you can enter a Houdini-protected URL into it and it will circumvent the copy protection, thus proving that this plugin is useless.

Um, what? Do I want to give access to my source code? Public access to a webpage’s source code is a fundamental underpinning of the Internet and it’s literally impossible to prevent someone from viewing your source code because the source code is required to render the page. It’s not possible to make it so that only web browsers can read and render your code.

Also, I was not able to find the “Tips & Technique” [sic] page that you are talking about.

Not really. Viewing a cached page is fairly easy and if a plagiarist really wants to steal your content, they’ll take the five minutes out and find the cached page. Or, they could download the webpage using wget or any other program that downloads webpages and view the source that way. There are a million ways to circumvent this.

Also, the photographic memory was an extreme example, but there’s another example like that that you’ll probably find more convincing: the Print Screen button. If you press the Print Screen button, you immediately have a picture of the entire screen, no copy/pasting required. Like this: https://other.fourisland.com/hkImages/print-screen.png

@phkcorp2005 The source code of a website can be viewed in other ways than right clicking on the screen. Plus, whatever JavaScript you are using to disable the context menu will also be bypassed if the page is rendered in a JavaScript-free environment like the text-based browser lynx. Lastly, you will severely annoy your visitors if you disable the context menu. Trust me.

@voyagerfan5761 My post is out now. It’s just a little rant on the subject but feel free to read it if you wish.

@phkcorp2005 It is true, because even though the text may vanish when highlighted in the web browser, there are other ways to download a page that completely bypass the script. JavaScript isn’t meant to be always available. JavaScript can even be turned off in your browser so no scripts are run. There are many ways to circumvent this type of protection.

Try this eccentric situation. Take someone with a photographic memory and show them your “copy protected” page. No highlighting will be done but the person with the photographic memory has already stolen your page. It’s not possible to have content that can be viewed in a browser, but not copied. By the time it’s been viewed in a browser, it’s already been copied because you have to download a webpage to view it in a browser.

I wrote a little rant on it at https://fourisland.com/blog/and-like-magic-nothing-happens/ if you want more information about this.

No, it doesn’t. You can also circumvent it by disabling JavaScript, writing a screen scraper, using the RSS feed or pressing the Print Screen key. (I wrote about this on my blog at https://fourisland.com/blog/and-like-magic-nothing-happens/ but the post will not be available until 12:30 EST tomorrow)

Oops, I’m back again. I have two problems with P2 now, first of all, clicking “Reply” on a post doesn’t work, it only works for comments, which is annoying because then you have to click “Permalink” and use the form there to comment. Second, if I disable threaded comments, P2 starts being really strange and it’s annoying because the comments look better flat. Is there anyway to fix this? Thanks in advance.

I’m sorry, disregard the entire post. It turned out I didn’t have threaded comments enabled. Sorry.