JavaScript User Prohibitions Are Like Content DRM, But Even Less Effective (teleread.com)

Robotech_Master writes: It always puzzles me whenever I run across a post somewhere that uses JavaScript to try to prevent me from copying and pasting text, or even viewing the source. These measures are simple enough to bypass just by disabling JavaScript in my browser. It seems like these measures are very similar to the DRM publishers insist on slapping onto e-books and movie discs—easy to defeat, but they just keep throwing them on anyway because they might inconvenience a few people.

Comments

Ah, but it's the effort to deter that counts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody expects a "No Trespassing" sign to stop anybody from really doing anything they shouldn't, heck, you shouldn't expect your home locks to stop a burglar, and no, nobody thinks a "No Guns allowed" sign stops anybody with firearms.

But once you say "Stop, don't do it" then anybody making the effort to continue, no matter how trivial, has made an intentional action on their part.

Re:Ah, but it's the effort to deter that counts.

[Alwin Henseler]

You might have been right if the DRM applied aligns 100% with legal boundaries. That is, allow what's legal and prevent illegal uses. And keeps doing so as circumstances / place / time changes.

But in practice, it never does. DRM on an e-book that prevents copying period, also prevents copying small snippets to use as quote. Which is perfectly legal - see "fair use".

Unlike author claims, the DRM on Blu-rays is far from broken. If it were, playing them on open source operating systems like Linux would be as easy as playing DVD's on there. But that's not the case. There's databases of per-disk decoding keys floating around. There's libraries that emulate some sort of virtual machine that's built into 'authorised' playback devices. There's other libraries that cut through parts of the DRM bullshit, or attempt to streamline the process.
But all of these are kludges, there's no 100% guarantee that a random Blu-ray will play (using open source, at the moment), and it's a lot of hassle for users who are just trying to play discs they legally purchased. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the DRM on Blu-rays will be as irrelevant as that on DVD's, but we're not there yet and in any case it doesn't change the annoyance factor one bit.
What's more: these issues mostly bother legal users, those who download movies illegally couldn't care less. But the DRM will still be in place as long as the discs itself. Regardless of legalities.

There's countless examples like that. The technical measures are practically never capable of following legal developments, nor do they adapt to local jurisdiction. Or have a built-in kill switch that 'frees' a product when legal restrictions end. In my personal opinion: DRM simply lowers the value of products that it's applied to, PERIOD. Sometimes to the point of making those products worthless. Some DRM is just more annoying or difficult to circumvent than others.

Trivial to bypass

[PhantomHarlock]

I am a photographer, and I have no problem sharing this:

If you want to get around the image obfuscation used by most photo sharing sites and more and more news sites, open up firefox, and go to view -> page style -> no style. That usually gives you the actual image displayed somewhere in the resulting page. No plugins needed.

If you want to better ensure your name stays with an image, watermark it, and add meta-data. Depending on how annoying the watermark is, someone could take the time to paint it out, and meta data is trivial to strip. As the saying goes, if you can see it, you can take it. If you're that worried about it, don't show it to anyone.

"Few"?

[Ixokai]

I think you underestimate how many people this sort of thing stops. Yeah, it won't stop most techheads, but the inconvenience is enough to stop most people. Hell, most people don't even know you can turn off javascript. Most people don't even know what javascript is.

That's sufficient for their purposes, really. They can't stop everyone, no system is perfect, its enough for them to minimize it.

Re:How do you stop someone from viewing the source

[cfalcon]

Javascript is a steaming pile of shit, riddled with vulnerabilities and broken from tip to top.

So of course they try to allow some overrides:

http://stackoverflow.com/quest...

Basically, you can google anything with "javascript disable" and get developers asking how to fuck their users in the pee hole. Often, there's an answer.

It wouldn't actually prevent users from viewing source though- I'm not aware of a way to do that. However, if there is, you can find it at good old google bombing expert sex change:

http://www.experts-exchange.co...

Also note: the real workaround for this isn't globally disabling javascript, though if everyone did that the web would shape up immediately. The real workaround is the various -monkeys that let you redefine pieces of javascript locally. Many sites go through several hoops to prevent loading on a browser that won't run their shitscript, but redefining parts and/or loading your own CSS can get you around most of it.

Yep...

[SharpFang]

Sometimes they don't even notice.

There was this site with "lessons" in using some API or library. There were code examples. And if you tried to select and copy, to paste an example into a compiler, a dialog would pop up telling you that the content is copyrighted and you're not allowed to copy it.

And at the bottom of the page was a survey, "What can I do to improve these lessons?"

I filled it out, with my email and a sarcastic comment about the copy restriction - that maybe forcing people to retype the examples isn't the best way of teaching. The owner of the site wrote me with a solemn apology, informing me that she didn't even notice the (dis)functionality was in place, and that it just got installed with the CMS and she didn't disable it because she didn't know it was there...

So... whoops?