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I'm surprised at how much effort Google went to here. I would have expected my browser not to be vulnerable to having any of its "functionality disabled", yet, with a recent Firefox, I found that I couldn't1. print the page to a PostScript file,
2. right-click on the page at all,
3. save the page to disk (the image would somehow not be downloaded at all),
4. view the precious image in Page Info/Media (although I could see which image it was),
5. save the precious image in Page Info/Media,
After reading the article, I suspect it's as simple as blocking the cleardot.gif using the Mozilla/Firefox adblock (or Norton firewall with any browser) which is acting as an overlay. If someone can give me a currently working Google Print url I can test a few other ideas as well.
This technique is impressive though and goes in the face of the answer given to the common newbie quesiton "how can I stop people from copying my website" (we usually point out repeatedly you can't).
This reminds me of the discovery of the Google technique to track clicks using a n image inserted via javascript. It was very slick thinking.
javascript:document.oncontextmenu = function() {return true;}; for(var i =0;i < document.images.length ;i++) { if(document.images[i].src.match('cleardot') == 'cleardot'){document.images[i].width=20 ;} ;};void('');
This would work in IE, but due to a bug/feature, IE cannot save background images from divs that don't have a valid css id. Thankfully firefox has no such qualms, it just only has a view backround menu, not a save background menu. So you view the background into a new tab (middle click) and save it from there. easy as 1-2-3? Well almost.
It's certainly a neat trick from google and I expect it to arrive on gallery and porn sites pretty soon.
Still its easier to block the image altogther. However if they are listening ;) I would just randomly name the image and then it's alot harder.
Apparently Slashdot has picked up on this story now too.
It's all rather sad. It took, what, a couple of days at most to get a reliable way of getting at the image? What on earth were Google thinking of? They should know better about how the web works. If you send it to my browser/machine, I can access it. Right-click blocking is amateur night, and disabling hotkeys is, as uncle_bob mentioned, the stuff of porn sites, not serious search companies.
The only justification for this appears to be some kind of lame attempt to increase the difficulty, in order to deter a casual attempt to copy. However, the cost is significant - broken images for some older or simpler browsers (nothing shows in Dillo, for example), which is a big step back from the work anywhere approach to markup in the usual search results; combined with non-existent accessibility for the visually-handicapped, to name just one group.
The idea behind Google Print is excellent, but the implementation has been ruined by such a feeble attempt at blocking the very content the service is offering.
I am not sure if it's an extension I have or built in,
but all I have to do is right click on the page somewhere clear,
and select "View Background Image" and bingo I can do what I want with it.
[print.google.com...]
Waste of everybody's time really!
