A Narrow Tool with Clear Trade‑Offs
Disabling right click is a visible deterrent against casual copying of images and text. It can reduce quick “save image” grabs and prevent some users from peeking at source in the context menu. But it’s also easy to bypass with keyboard shortcuts, dev tools, or screenshots. Used broadly, it risks disrupting accessibility and frustrating legitimate visitors who rely on contextual actions for productivity.
Where It Helps—and Where It Hurts
Right‑click blocks are most defensible on clearly labeled, high‑risk templates: premium galleries, course pages, or demo areas. Add a brief tooltip explaining the restriction and offer alternatives, like a share button or a request link. Avoid enabling sitewide; it will generate support tickets and workarounds without meaningfully reducing determined copying.
Friendlier Alternatives
Watermarked images and light overlays discourage theft with fewer side effects. For text, copy‑with‑attribution and selection overlays are less intrusive and maintain assistive compatibility. For automation, UI tricks don’t matter—edge controls do. The most sustainable plan layers soft UX nudges with infrastructure protections.
Implementation Tips
If you proceed, scope the block to specific selectors or templates. Provide keyboard‑accessible paths for legitimate actions (e.g., a “copy code” button in docs). Test with screen readers and keyboard navigation to confirm that essential tasks work without the context menu. Keep your policy copy short and courteous; tone affects compliance.
Related Pages (this 10‑page cluster)
For a menu of options and when to use each, Copy Protection Tools compares scripts, edge rules, and UX cues with maintenance and accessibility considerations.
To discourage copy‑paste gently, Prevent Text Copying focuses on selective deterrents that preserve selection for citations and assistive technologies.
UI controls don’t touch bots. Prevent Content Scraping covers rate limits, signatures, and anomaly detection that cut automated harvesting dramatically.
Images deserve specialized tactics; Protect WordPress Media maps watermarks, overlays, and delivery patterns that reduce value to thieves without hurting UX.
Documents leak quickly. Secure PDF Downloads guides gating, signed URLs, and robots rules that keep premium PDFs out of search and mirrors.
For heavier abuse, Block Bots & Scrapers suggests WAF/CDN recipes that filter bad traffic while preserving legitimate crawlers.
Stop free image hosting elsewhere with Prevent Hotlinking—referrer checks and tokenization end third‑party embedding from your bandwidth.
Place all of this inside a hardened baseline via WordPress Security Overview, aligning roles, updates, and backups with protection decisions.
Finally, be ready to act with Protect Intellectual Property—notices, registration, and evidence that support proportional enforcement.