Breaking Google's DRM

An anonymous reader writes "Google's new Google Print service (that lets you see scanned pages from printed books) has a pile of advanced browser-disabling DRM in it ('Pages displaying your content have print, cut, copy, and save functionality disabled in order to protect your content.'). This works with JavaScript turned off, even in Free Software browsers. Seth Schoen has posted preliminary notes on some breaks to the DRM (beyond just automating a screenshotting process), including a proposal for a circumventing proxy that would fetch Google Print pages and strip out the DRM. A full exploration of the html obfuscation and DRM employed by Google would be very interesting; certainly the ability for a remote attacker to disable critical browser features like save, right-click, copy and cut against the user's wishes is a major security vulnerability in Moz/Firefox and should be fixed ASAP."

Plain google search on book titles

[JLavezzo]

Searching google on book titles returns a Print match if they have the book in their records. Not too many yet, it seems.

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Google DRM

To further protect your book content, printing and image copying functions are disabled on all Google Print content pages.

Similarly:

We've put a number of measures in place to prevent the downloading, copying, or printing of your content [...] Pages displaying your content have print, cut, copy, and save functionality disabled in order to protect your content.

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't

1. 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,
6. find the precious image in the DOM Inspector (which seemed like the really heavy artillery), although the DOM Inspector did let me see its URL as part of an uninterpreted style definition, and seem to reveal the trick: defining a style called ".theimg", with the definition

{ background-image:url("http://print.google.com/long url with cryptographic signature"); background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:center left; background-color:white; }

and then invoking that style inside a

tag:



So I tried turning off JavaScript, and I found that I was essentially no better off: right-clicking caused a copy of cleardot.gif, not the .theimg background, to be saved to disk. For some reason, Save Page As.../Web Page (complete) still declined to download the background image at all, even in the absence of JavaScript, as if perhaps the CSS parser in the display logic in Firefox is smarter than the CSS parser in the Save Page As... code.

The two ways I've found so far that work to capture images from Google Print are a screen capture (I used xwd, which of course worked perfectly) and looking in the on-disk cache (ls -lrt .mozilla/firefox/default.*/Cache/[0-9A-F]*). I'm still puzzled about why Page Info and the DOM Inspector won't actually reveal the image referenced in the .theimg style or allow it to be saved.

If you wanted to write a proxy that would make Google Print pages capable of being saved to disk, you would presumably want to match

background-image:url("http://print.google.com/\( [^ "]+\)")

(although you'd need to be careful to match only the one in the definition of ".theimg", because it looks like there may at least one other background-image:url) and then replace

I haven't tried this because it felt like too much work relative to the previous two methods.

Contrary to what I expected, Google Print does not seem to check referer, so it seems to be possible merely to extract the URL from the definition of .theimg, and then to load it directly. Perhaps that will change in the future.

Google must have hired some experts on html image protection or html obfuscation. To be sure, there are lots of other tricks in Google Print that I had never seen before. It is hard to think that the author of that HTML obfuscation was not the subject of Richard Stallman's accidental haiku. It is amusing to think that Mr. Bad's "other" DeCSS might at last be used for some kind of circumvention (although I doubt it, because presumably Google Print simply won't work at all with the CSS removed).

Explanation Provided

[Gerv]

A full exploration of the html obfuscation and DRM employed by Google would be very interesting

I've been looking at this - there's a blog post [mozillazine.org] with some preliminary discussions, and a follow-up [mozillazine.org] giving some ways of getting around it. The short answer is that if you just want to save the image to disk, it's not too hard in a decent browser [mozilla.org].

Gerv

Re:First, how go I get to Google Print

[deicide]

Seacrh for "economic development".

gerv talks about this

[glob]

gerv, a mozilla developer, has a few blog entries that talk about how the print service tries to stop you from getting to the jpeg's, and how to bypass that.

Google Print, And Clue Barriers [mozillazine.org]
Google Print Hacking Ideas [mozillazine.org]

For those with tinfoil hats

[OverlordQ]

Last comment on Bug 226572 - Google branded Mozilla browser [mozilla.org] was:

This is a duplicate of a private bug about working with Google. So closing this one.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 213362 ***

Now they're both [mozilla.org] mysteriously restricted to general viewing.

Re:Nature of Information

[hype7]

this is a damn good point.

I copied this from a post I saw earlier on slashdot - I have lost the link but still have the text.


That's why they need the dumb-ass DMCA, because it's impossible to make secure DRM. DRM is not and can never be cryptographically secure because it is not actually a cryptography problem. Cyrpography is about keeping secrets away from unauthorized people. That's fairly easy. DRM is about GRANTING people authorized access and GIVING them the key and then attempting to keep what you've given to them a secret from them.

DRM is a schizophrenic and fundamentally impossible task.

All they can do is the key obscurely inside the player and hope that no one makes the effort to look at it.

It was written about SACDs, but it applies just as equally to stopping people copying text. In the long run, DRM won't work. It's just a serious pain in the ass, especially for legitimate users (how can you get fair use if the damn copy/paste functionality is disabled?)

-- james

-1 Troll

[jbellis]

their bizarre "don't delete your email (and even if you do, we're going to keep a copy)" policy

It's been explained ad nauseum that google does not archive deleted email indefinitely; deleting just isn't instantaneous, because of the nature of the system.

Some news stories have suggested that Google intends to keep copies of users' email messages even after they've deleted them, or closed their accounts. This is simply not true. Google keeps multiple backup copies of users' emails so that we can recover messages and restore accounts in case of errors or system failure. Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time. This is standard practice in the email industry, which Gmail and other major webmail services follow in order to provide a reliable service for users. We will make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical.

from the gmail privacy page [google.com]

One-line bookmarklet for your convenience

[FooAtWFU]

Bookmark javascript:void(document.oncontextmenu=null) [about.com] . Instant right-click enabler.

It's not tough "DRM"... my university's local online student newspaper equivalent [wfu.edu] effectively does the same thing.

very easy to break...

[AmigaAvenger]

Guess I just broke it...

First, turn off javascript. then turn on image dimensions. right click on the dimensions for the main image, and click view background image.

http://print.google.com/print?id=ULQSG0Zs7vcC&pg=3 &img=1&q=mastering+digital+photography&sig=gv2nFpt Ef0dj7Gzb8eZ4U8UdtUo [google.com]

is the URL that is used, and surprisingly it is linkable from outside, it doesn't appear to check IP's, browsers, or anything else. (deep link away!)

Gerv did it

[SimplexO]

Gerv [mozillazine.org], who works for mozilla [mozilla.org]/bugzilla [bugzilla.org], already went through this [mozillazine.org], and found several ways around google's hackery. He then went and summarized the multiple ways to do it [mozillazine.org] in good browsers [getfirefox.com].

Re:here we go again.

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

How do you mean "begin"? Plenty of books on Kazaa and many of them aren't exactly legal.
And how about Usenet?

Re:Please provide demo URLs

[gregarican]

Here is an excerpt from a Mozilla blog regarding this. The parent URL of the print.google.com example is http://print.google.com/print?id=ULQSG0Zs7vcC&lpg= 3&pg=0_1&sig=O0-GVU5AdfrMmUtu0N5mNM7sUCg.

Next idea: use the DOM Inspector to inspect the entire browser XUL. This means that the context menu will still work. It's more difficult to do, because you can't locate elements by clicking in the content area - it only works for the chrome. Still, we finally track down the clear GIF and delete it. Boom! This time Firefox crashes (taking with it an earlier version of this blog post.) :-(

OK, let's try another approach. Let's find the surrounding

in the DOM Inspector, look at its computed style, and copy the URL out of it. Except that the Computed Style view doesn't support copying. Undeterred, and feeling close to the goal, we view the applied styles for the

and try and copy the URL out of the individual background style rule.

Success! This works. We can chop off the CSS gubbins, paste the result into a web browser URL bar, and finally get an image we can save.

In fact, you can also get the URL of the page graphic by viewing the source. It turns out that it's not as hard as I made out, because currently, the

in question has a sensible class name: .theimg { background-image:url("http://print.google.com/prin t?id=ULQSG0Zs7vcC&pg=3&img=1&sig=gv2nFptEf0dj7Gzb8 eZ4U8UdtUo") }
so it's easy to find.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason, Save Page As.../Web Page (complete) still declined to download the background image at all, even in the absence of JavaScript, as if perhaps the CSS parser in the display logic in Firefox is smarter than the CSS parser in the Save Page As... code.

On one the known issues with Mozilla's save-a-complete-Web-page feature is that it doesn't download background images specified in CSS.

Just use the Firebird extention

[Anonymous Coward]

Install the Firebird extension "allow right-click" and do what you want with the images...

Re:So?

[kaleco]

And censorship. You forgot their Chinese censorship ;)

From the Google Print FAQ:

[ImaLamer]

Question #5 states:

What can I do with books that I find?

Well, you can browse a few pages, learn more about the topics explored by the book, buy it, or commit a selection to memory. To further protect your book content, printing and image copying functions are disabled on all Google Print content pages.

I don't see the big deal. As long as they let me still use "back", "forward" and "exit" I'll be happy. Sure it sucks that you might have to buy a book or write down your favorite quote, but it's free as in gratis at this point.

Amazon only lets you get about 3 pages into a book and usually you can't leave the introduction.

I can print with Safari

[Jeremy Erwin]

Although command P produced a page with a big white hole where the text was supposed to be, I used the "Activity Viewer" to discover that one of the components of the page was substantially larger than the others. I was able double click that particular URl, which opened in a new window, shorn of any nasty DRM.
I am afraid, however, that Apple will face pressure to restrict this rather useful feature. At one time, it could be used to evade Quicktime silliness, but it seems the feature has since been disabled.

(The transparent.gif overlay technique has previously been used by (ahem) vendors of photography, and (of all people) ebay sellers. It's not quite novel.)

502 Error

[barcodez]

Is anyone else getting 502 error. Has Google really been /.ed. If so shame on them - Google seem to be losing the thread, first DRM and now system outages - all in one day :(

The text is an image

[tafinucane]

The text of the book is a dymamically generated jpeg.

# telnet print.google.com 80
GET /print?id=TpUEyu2mTdoC&pg=3&img=1&q=economic+devel opment&sig=Aty75CJmTJeGBo3RuQNDK2rySFw HTTP/1.0

Trying 64.233.161.118...^M
Connected to print.google.com (64.233.161.118).^M
Escape character is '^]'.^M
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=3a4b3c405b55e316:TM=1097254155:LM=10972541 55:S=0M__0IuYQEWmHl8g; expires=
Sun, 17-Jan-2038 19:14:07 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
Server: OFE/0.1
Content-Length: 95942
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 16:49:15 GMT
Connection: Keep-Alive

^@^PJFIF^@^A^A^@^@^A^@^A^@^@^@C^@^H^F^F^G^F^E^H^ G^ G^G
<snip>

The jpeg can be converted to postscript, which can be converted to text.

This gets one page. If someone could reverse-engineer the "sig" argument I'm sure you could specify a page number.

To be honest, it would probably be easier to just check the "Economic Development" out from the library.

I also notice the slashdot effect is starting to crush print.google.com.

Re:That explains those mysterious hirings

[Anonymous Coward]

First the obvious: It's trivial to break "Save Page" if you can require JavaScript. If someone finds a way around their DRM, they will simply go that route.

Second, even without Javascript, CSS offers numerous ways to make saving a webpage a complicated problem. Some browsers also honor cache timeouts when you try to save a page and make revealing roundtrips to the server. You could also trigger alarms based on page frequency. Humans don't read a page per second...

Ultimately however, what you can see you can save. Google doesn't give you plain text, only images which are hardly suitable for OCR, but for some that may be enough. I for one wouldn't want to read a text which is presented at what looks like 50 ppi.

Re:That explains those mysterious hirings

[m50d]

Google ceased to be good in my book when they used the DMCA to take down an rss feed of google news.

Re:For those with tinfoil hats

[MillionthMonkey]

<html>
<title>Ook!</title>
<body>
Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled.
</body>
</html>

Wow. That's a sentence I never expected to read.

Re:Getting stuff for free?

[Kaa]

Whilst I'm all for breaking DRM that hinders the rights you have to use your content in the way you want - this just looks like breaking DRM to get stuff for free.

Which DRM? I have no DRM installed on my machine. I have agreed to no contracts or EULAs with regard to DRM.

Google sends me some copyrighted information. The copyright law limits what I can do with it (e.g. I cannot republish), but for my own private use I can do pretty much anything I want with it.

That image already exists as a file (or part of a file) on my machine. What Google is doing is trying to prevent me from looking at it in non-approved ways. Well, it can try, but I have no legal or ethical obligations to follow its wishes. If I want to take that image, load it into Photoshop and play with it there, I am completely within my rights.

So, no, I don't see any problems (either legal or ethical) with breaking this pseudo-DRM -- and I am willing to bet it will be breakable very easily -- and using these images however I want within the limits set by the copyright law.

Re:It's doomed.

[markhb]

I just looked at the page source code... they actually did something very similar to this. They create a table cell, set the background image to the book page (it's fed out of their search engine as opposed to being a static image link, so I imagine the backend screens based on http_referer or something), and then stretch a 1x1 transparent gif over the table cell. "Show Image" then shows the transparent gif, and there is no "show background image" since we are over a foreground image.

They also use the standard context-menu disabling Javascript, which IE respects (and Mozilla does as well if you tell it to). Other than this (standard-issue) trick, they aren't doing anything sneaky to the user's browser at all. They could even disable the DRM for non-copyright pages if they wanted to (don't use the transparent cover image, and don't disable the context menu). All in all, it seems like a pretty slick implementation!

Re:So?

[m50d]

They became an Evil Company last april [internetnews.com]

Re:First, how go I get to Google Print

[good-n-nappy]

Apparently it's slashdotted. I'm getting a 502 server error when I try to look at the book.

Table graphics

[HanClinto]

In college, an acquaintance of mine and I worked on this concept, and he implemented it. I think his final version took in .png files and outputted HTML for them. They looked perfect, and it even had a little bit of optimization for colspanning if adjacent pixels were the same color. Suffice it to say, yes, it's been tested. Yes, it works. Yes, you would need more memory. :)

Took me 30 seconds and a packet sniffer

[Barto]

...to see what image was the "protected" page. Search the source, it's a CSS background-image. There are two background-images: a thumbnail of the cover and the book page you are viewing.

All you need is a script [mac.com] to retrieve CSS background-images and *poof* goes Google copy protection. It was doomed from the start, anyway.

Re:Security issue?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

There's an extension called Allow Right-Click [roachfiend.com] to accomplish just that. (Granted, it would be nice if this was integrated into the browser)

Re:That explains those mysterious hirings

[DrXym]

It's not that hard to mess with a browser in this way. For example, to hide content when you print is a matter of some CSS2.

@media print {
#content { display: none; }
}

Toss in half a dozen other spoilers such as multi-part mime & redirects (to hide URLs), DOM event handlers (to handle & ignore mouse clicks), transparent gifs (to mangle context menus), transparent DIVs that become opaque when printed and you achieve the desired effect.

They're all surmountable, but I suppose Google want to be seen to be making a concious effort to block people from printing out pages.

Easy to circumvent

[sik0fewl]

This is easy to circumvent, at least in X. You can copy text by simply selecting it.

http://print.google.com/print/doc?articleid=y4tfu9 YqpnG [google.com] (sans formatting):

Variety Orwell Rolls in His Grave Ronnie Scheib Nov 4, 2003 Docu A marvel of passionate succinctness, Robert Kane Pappas' docu critically examines the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Docu asks, "Could a media system, controlled by a few global corporations with the ability to overwhelm all competing voices, be able to turn lies into truth?" "Orwell Rolls in His Grave" refrains from preaching to the choir but if its biting analysis proves true, film is unlikely to ever be presented to the general public. Indie arthouse and cable venues therefore beckon. Pic meticulously traces the process by which black may be turned into white, with frequent references to totalitarian states both fictional and real -- Orwell's "1984" competes with Goebbels' theories on propaganda and blatant examples of Soviet revisionism for pride of place. Helmer Pappas (director of the fiction features "Now I Know," and "Some Fish Can Fly") forsakes all pretense of presenting both sides, since presumably the other side is promoted daily by radio, television and the press. Pappas offers like-minded journalists, media watchdogs, scholars and legislators who voice their deep concerns about the health of democracy in America. Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders, an Independent, wonders why his constituents never ask him why they must work longer hours for less pay than they did 25 years ago or why factories are moving to Third World countries. Instead, a worker might accost him angrily about his vote against the repeal of the estate tax (redubbed "death tax" to better demonize it), which affects only the top two percent of the population. Pic largely relies on talking heads, but the conviction and punch of the interviewees' commentary, leavened with pertinent excerpts from a lively Michael Moore speaking engagement, never becomes tedious. Graphs showing the income of the middle-class lamely flatlining while that of the upper-class climbs off the page are accompanied with shocking government figures of a 9% increase in middle-class income verses a 140% increase at the top. Pappas et. al. examine the conflicts of interest that make the giant corporate conglomerates who own the media unwilling to follow up on scoops that would adversely affect their varied sources of income. One pithy segment shows a comical changing of the guard: Scruffy peons, paid to keep a place on line, are replaced by Armani-clad lobbyists in the halls of Congress minutes before it convenes. Filmmakers assert that Big Media itself has become a huge special interest, pouring billions into lobbying and effectively controlling which politicians get airtime and which do not. Charles Lewis, an investigative reporter, former "60 Minutes" producer and founder of the Center for Public Integrity, discusses the way the media determines the relative longevity of stories, the Monica Lewinsky scandal wallowed in ad nauseum while a well-researched report on George W. Bush's insider trading has "disappeared" without a trace. Media treatments of the 2000 election and the Iraqi war come under heavy partisan fire. Furthermore, docu questions how 69% of the American public got the idea that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Docu merrily deconstructs the myth of "deregulation," from its inception under Reagan to the infamous Telecommunications Act backed by FCC head Michael Powell (son of Colin) who opined that "openness isn't always good." Pic ends with an epilogue that finds true drama and a sliver of hope in the hearing that led to Act's eventual repeal by a coalition of the strangest political bedfellows imaginable, including the NRA, Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, NOW and Jesse Helms. Copyright © 2003 Reed Business Information Subscribe to Variety

Re:It's doomed.

[Entropius]

Couldn't that be fixed with ex. proxonomitron?

Re:Security issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Firefox 1.0 PR on Windows, it's Tools -> Options -> Web Features -> -> Advanced -> "Disable or replace context menus".
And yes, you can right click on a Google image and save it. Well, almost. First, you have to use AdBlock to block the "cleardot.gif" file, the transparent GIF that overlays the image. Then you right-clicksually called) to "View Background Image". Then you will get the JPEG image of the book's page. You can then right-click the JPEG image and save it where you wish.
If one wanted to make this process a little easier, one could use a proxy server that saved all images that passed through. Of course, the proxy server would have to ignore the No-Cache headers that Google probably puts on the images, but that shouldn't be difficult.

DRM is a misnomer

[tracks]

DRM (Digital Rights Management) actually manages and enforces permissions based on a user's privledges, per user. Usually this is in lock and key form.

On the other hand, Copy-protection indiscriminantly curtails duplication.

Easy to break in Firefox + adblock

[ttlgDaveh]

* Set Adblock to "Hide Ads" * Block: http://print.google.com/images/cleardot.gif * Prevent websites from changing the context menu: Web features > Advanced * et voila

Re:Easy to circumvent

[jsveiga]

I think the url you've posted is a magazine article, not a book. Magazines will have "articleid=" on the url; books (AFAIThink) have "isbn=".

That, or Google just gave up all the protection thing, because on the url you posted I can select, right-click-copy with Firefox 1.0PR AND Internet Explorer on Windows XP SP2. (oh wait 'XP' has 'X' too ;))

For crying out loud...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is that big of a deal that you be able to STEAL someone's copyrighted text through Google, use Print Screen you idiots.

Re:Security issue?

[Plutor]

I'd like to see something like this, for instance, in Firefox's security settings near the Javascript permission settings:

Block sites from:
[X] Disabling right-click context menus


In Firefox:
* "Edit" -> "Preferences"
* Select "Web Features"
* Click the "Advanced" button next to "Enable JavaScript"
* Uncheck "Disable or replace context menus"
(This was bug 86193, checked into the code in March. It's in 1.0PR)

As for single-window mode, there are plenty of extensions. Try the one called "Tabbrowser Extensions [sakura.ne.jp]", for instance.

You can read the whole book on Amazon

[Arkhan]

You can read the entire book on Amazon -- it is just a little annoying. Amazon will let you read +/- 2 pages from the first page or any page that contains your search results from "search this book".

So:

• Start at the beginning of the book
• Read 3 pages
• Pick a phrase on the third page
• Search for that phrase within the book
• Click the search result for the third page
• Read the next two pages
• Pick a phrase on the fifth page
• Search for that phrase within the book
• Click the search result for the fifth page
• Read the next two pages
• Repeat until end of book

It's irritating, but when you're trying to find a passage in the book and the three-page limit smacks you, you can use this method to get more of the book (or all of it, if you have the patience).

Re:Article Text

[Phoenix-IT]

As you mentioned the image is acutally a background image. Disable Java, Javascript and allowing pages to install software.

They are resizing a clear GIF file to cover the entire face of the background image. Save the source in notepad search for cleardot.gif. Change all of the size specifications for these IMG tags to 10. Save the file and reopen with firefox. There will be a small narrow band where you can see part of the target document. Right-click and "Copy Background Image", then open paint and paste and you have it.

DRM cracked in 30 minutes. This shit doesn't work...

Re:That explains those mysterious hirings

[magefile]

Um ... look here: Wikipedia's article on Atheism [wikipedia.com]. Quote:

* Weak atheism, or negative atheism, is the standpoint that there is no reason to believe that any particular god exists. A weak atheist sees no reality in any god he's been told about, and doesn't expect to ever find a god he can believe is real. This is not equivalent to agnosticism, although there is often an overlap between the two; an agnostic believes he does not or can not have enough information to say for certain whether any gods exist.

* Strong atheism, or positive atheism, goes further to make the assertion that there are no such things as gods. This may, but need not, include the opinion that the existence of a god is logically impossible; strong atheists base this on logical a priori arguments intending to demonstrate that omnipotent, omniscient, and/or transcendent conceptions of "God" are self-contradictory or internally inconsistent.

...

People unfamiliar with the distinction often misunderstand "weak atheism" to be agnosticism, and consider "strong atheism" to characterize all atheists. This leads to arguments against strong atheism being incorrectly levied against weak atheism as well.

Break it in one minute with IE, no less.

[Otto]

IE. Default settings. No proxy, no modifications. Nothing particularly special about it.

-Load up the book in the browser.
-Click the View menu, select Source.
-Search for "div class=browse"
-Immediately before that, you'll find something like this in a CSS style:
{ background-image:url(http://print.google.com/print ?blablahblah");bunch of other stuff;}
-Take that URL, copy and paste it into a new browser window and voila, you have the full size image. Save As or Print on this image works fine. No problems at all.

Seriously, this is trivial to break.

What's not trivial is getting an entire book. How to figure out how to get every page is the tough part. Getting the image itself is a cakewalk. It's just Javascript tricks to break right-clicking and CSS tricks to break direct printing from that window. Saving gets broken because of the tricky CSS using the IMG as a background image. The browser doesn't think to save the image, is all.

It takes two seconds with Safari

[network23]

It takes two seconds with Safari

1. Go to a "protected" page, like the sample page [google.com].

2. Select the Activity window from Safari.

3. Double click on the largest image, i.e. this [google.com] page.

4. Do what ever you want with it.

5. Profit!!!

I FOUND AN EASY FIREFOX WORKAROUND (grin grin)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, disable javascript. (Set javascript.enabled to false (just double click)) Now you can already right click on the google book.

Ok, so go to a bookpage, this will help finding one: http://www.google.com/search?q=mastering+digital+p hotography [google.com]

Next, use the Web Developer extension (you have that one right?) to Display ID & Class details. You will see a class named theimg. Now right click that red little box and "View background image".

I thank you very much.

Hopla

Re:That explains those mysterious hirings

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Wells Fargo Online Banking does stuff like that so a printed version of your account history is "printer friendly".

Actually works extremely well, so such things can be used for good.

Not that hard?

[oborseth]

1) Search for "to kill a mockingbird".
2) Click on the book link.
3) View source.
4) Search the source for something like: http://print.google.com/print?id=iGvy3fB-D-QC&pg=5 &img=1&q=to+kill+a+mockingbird&sig=KQFFYkYib3kQQGF e9h8nx1JlbIE
5) Go to that URL in your web browser.
6) Save the image.

Step one INCORRECT

[crabpeople]

Actually, its not edit -> preferences its

Tools -> Options -> Web features -> Advanced Button -> uncheck "Disable or replace context menus"

most of the time "edit" is used to copy, paste find and undo. never seen a preference selection in an edit menu before.

Firefox + javascript bookmark = Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use the following javascript as a bookmark to move the obscuring image out of the way, then right click to get the context menu, and middle click "view background" to open the image in a new tab for saving.

javascript:for(var i =0;i < document.images.length ;i++) { if(document.images[i].src.match('cleardot') == 'cleardot'){document.images[i].width=20 ;} ;};void('');

Re:Step one INCORRECT

[HermanAB]

You are both correct I think. The menus are different in Windoze and Linux versions. Gawd gnows gwy...