On disabling right-click

Posted on February 3rd, 2005 by Sacha Chua

http://www.houseonahill.net/ disables right-click on its pages. I
suppose it’s to stop people from saving webpages to their hard disk,
but it’s not a very effective way of stopping people from copying
things because people can always highlight text and then copy the text
normally.

Disabling right-click punishes power users, though. I can’t easily
bookmark pages using my del.icio.us. I can’t copy a link without
visiting it, which means I have to click on the permalink page, move
over to the address bar, and copy the address from there if I’m going
to cite something in my blog. I can’t easily subscribe via
http://www.bloglines.com .

I’ve seen a Mozilla extension for disabling pesky right-click
disablers, and I think I’ll go install that right now. I could also
always browse the website in w3m or some other text browser.

Disabling right-click is a technological attempt at solving a social
problem, and although it discourages casual users, I don’t think it’s
worth the cost.

UPDATE: The right-click script sassylawyer uses also results in an
error when I middle-click on a link in order to open it in a new tab.
The page loads, but I have to click through a “Sorry, right-click is
disabled.” message. Mrph.

UPDATE: The same site blacklists http://del.icio.us . ARGH.

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