InDesign epub images are draggable after export. Why?

[frankb91561333]

InDesign is great for making epub books. BUT I don't want to proceed with "marketing" until I have the answer to this "problem." Why are the images draggable in my exported epub books? (By "draggable" I don't mean "copy-able," that is a different topic). What I'm talking about is, unlike a PDF, where the image is securely fastened to the file, my epub images are easily lifted out by dragging). I have posed this question to Adobe and have tried all of their suggestions, unfortunately, after each attempt at one of their fixes, when I've sent my successfully completed (fixed layout or reflowable) epub book to someone outside of my "Adobe family," they report that they are (still) able to drag the images out of the book. I would love to know what I am doing wrong. Is there something specific that I need to do BEFORE export? OR, is this just the way it is with Adobe InDesign produced epub books? Thanks in advance for any assistance! 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I would think this has far more to do with your reader than with the EPUB file per se. Nothing in EPUB or any other e-book file "permits" image dragging (or, AFAIK, prevents it).

It's very similar to image management on web pages. (If you're not aware of it, EPUB is just a packaged web page, more or less — HTML file, CSS style file, TOC and index files, some miscellaneous bits. You can open it with any ZIP file manager.) It may be possible to add code to lock the images, as is done on some websites. But mostly, I think you are seeing EPUB the way it works from pretty much any production tool and on any reader.

[frankb91561333]

Thank you for the suggestion that it could be the reader… but having sent the ePub to someone reading it on Apple Books, the images in the ePub were still draggable.
Any other suggestions are appreciated.

Sent from my iPad

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I have never considered the issue, but I'd suspect it's integral to EPUB (as noted above). It would take a reader feature/function to lock the images against dragging and export. I am not sure any of the (web/browser) code that can be used to lock images against user download would work in the EPUB format (and they would again be reader/software dependent).

Is your concern that readers will be able to drag the images outside the reader for use, as with web images? Or do you just not like that it happens?

[frankb91561333]

On an iPad or cell phone, dragging doesn’t appear to be possible. But on a laptop or bigger, dragging is easy. For the purpose of creating a book for sale, this is not desirable. Again, it isn’t that I’m afraid that my images will be copied, I realize that that can happen, (of course I’d rather that such “sharing” didn’t happen) it is simply that my ePub seems to be the only ePub that I’ve ever found to have draggable images and HOPED that there was something that I could learn in order to remedy this. Does anyone else have the same image draggability in your ePub straight out of InDesign (whether or not it bothers you)?

Sent from my iPad

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Maybe I wasn't clear: yes, my images in EPUB are draggable in any computer-based reader. However, I don't think it has anything to do with InDesign. I just opened several EPUBs in Calibre and all the images were draggable. I converted a Word file with some images using the MS tool and... the images were draggable.

I believe this is an absolutely inherent part of the EPUB format and how (computer-based) readers, which are simply variants of web browsers, handle it.

There's no bug or quirk here. If you don't like the draggabilty issue, you're going to have to investigate some very deep HTML/CSS/JS code options to try and lock the images, as some web pages do.

To be honest, I've never heard of this feature/problem/concern, but then, I long ago came to terms with the fact that NO form of electronic publishing is secure. The best you can do is to take away the simple options for copying and so forth. This would seem to be another example of that.

[rayek.elfin]

It depends on the reader software. For example, Thorium prevent the dragging of images. Calibre allows it.

Nothing to do with InDesign.