When you create a Flash piece, do you tag it with your "created by" information?
The process of tagging a .swf file (I'll use the word tagging here informally, for lack of a better term) is quite simple. In fact, all it takes is one line of code:
"Copyright (C) 2004 Darron Schall";
String literals get compiled into the .swf and have virtually no impact at runtime. Truth be told, tagging will add a few (3) instructions and a few more bytes to the .swf file size depending on the string size, but the "code" doesn't actually do anything when the Flash Player tries to execute it. However, tagging does two things:
- Identifies you as the author
- Maybe, just maybe, it will ward off someone attempting to decompile your movie to get at your code (the "scare-factor")
In all honesty if someone decompiled your movie and saw the line you tagged, then they'll probably continue past the copyright and just gank your code anyway.. so #2 probably isn't that applicable.
However, #1 is a little more interesting. Have you seen people attempt to take credit for something they didn't create? I have... if everyone tags their .swf with "created by" information inside the .swf, it might eliminate some of those claims.
Perhaps a better repercussion of swf tagging could come from google and search engines in general. By now, you probably know that google will scarf up the contents of a .swf file and index it for searching, but what if you don't want it to? It might be nice to add a "no-index" tag to the .swf, to deter google from indexing your .swf. Something like this might work:
"meta[robots]:no-index,no-follow";
Obviously the above doesn't work at all yet, but it's interesting to consider. Tagging is an easy way to add meta information to a .swf file. Are there any standards out there for swf tagging yet? I wonder if this is something that could be valuable and might catch on...
Note that tagging isn't quite the same as easter eggs, described here:
http://www.bitchwhocodes.com/mt/archives/000095.html
Interesting... I tried a web search on "Copyright (C) 2004 Darron Schall" and variants, but didn't pull up a hit in Google, so I guess they still ignore this string in the compiled script... seems like inserting it as a textfield would let you track it in a search engine, though... search term "'copyright (c) 2004' filetype:swf" pulls up a lot of hits already, and if you had your name on there it seems like it would be easy to track unauthorized distribution of a project...?
Thanks for the comments John -- nothing came up for your search results because a lot of what I do is "behind closed doors" so to speak. :-)
I'm not sure how google indexes .swf files - if you add a string in the .swf, you can get it out by looking at the bytecode, but you have me wondering now if google only tries to index text in text fields as opposed to actionscript string literals. Thinking about it now, it probably does only read the text in text fields.. but some sort of standard to augment .swfs with meta content might be nice. Don't you think?
I've been implementing the following code in my swfs. Gives you a right click menu saying what, when, who. Started it mainly for version control, so testers knew what version they were testing, but you can add any data there.
var menu:ContextMenu = new ContextMenu();
menu.hideBuiltInItems();
menu.customItems.push(new ContextMenuItem("Application Name", nullHandler));
menu.customItems.push(new ContextMenuItem("Version 1.32, December 1, 2004", nullHandler));
menu.customItems.push(new ContextMenuItem("Copyright (c)2004 by Me", nullHandler));
function nullHandler(){
}
_root.menu = menu;