Breaking Google's DRM 892
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."
That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:5, Informative)
@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.
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:5, Interesting)
<style type="text/css" media="print">
</style>
<div class="hidden">
<div style='background-image:url("http://print.google.
<img src="clear.gif" width=575 height=752>
</div>
</div>
It's a cool technique. But I can'timagine how hundreds of people on slashdot can look at this without more than half a dozen knowing how it's done.
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:5, Funny)
Correct, Google is much more useful.
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:5, Funny)
Blasphemer!
Re:That explains those mysterious hirings (Score:3, Informative)
Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
While I agree it would be nice to fix this from a convenience point of view, and a "it's my computer - it'll do what I want" point of view, how is this a security risk? How do I get a trojan, or lose files, because of an inability to copy & paste on a particular page?
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
A part of your security is having control over your computer. Your security has been compromised when you lose that control.
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Security issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Say your operating system didn't let you choose a custom desktop image--you had to use what you were given. It's a restriction of choice, to be sure, but how is it a security risk?
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google Print doesn't offer the save/print/whatever functionality you desire, then don't use it.
There, you just exercised your control over your computer.
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Interesting)
> including the decision of which software to install, and which services you
> choose to use.
Unfortunately, that is the idea behind "trusted" computing. You no longer have full control over your own machine, you can only run applications "trusted" by those controlling the DRM. As soon as you run an untrusted app, you cannot run a trusted application. Typically, in this case the trusted app would be a DRM compliant browser. Attempt to fire up mozilla or anything that can otherwise image the data (even from a screenshot) and the it will not be allowed to run, or if it does the trusted apps will immediately shut down. At least in theory, that is how it is supposed to work.
Of course, nothing would stop you from capturing the screen from a camera on a second PC synchronized to the frame rate. It just makes things awkward.
Mandatory Access Control (Score:4, Insightful)
This used to be called "Mandatory Access Control" (MAC, as opposed to the kind of multiuser protection most people deal with... "Discretionary Access Control") before Microsoft decided to change the definition of "trust".
As soon as you run an untrusted app, you cannot run a trusted application.
This is one way of doing it. Another way is to create a compartmentalised environment, where applications can not get information from compartments with a higher classification, nor transfer information to compartments of a lower classification.
Ironically, THIS kind of MAC environment under administrative control can be a major security enhancement. You could create a compartment with "untrusted classification"... which would effectively have fewer rights than even a normal application... and force users to run their web browsers and other untrusted applications inside it. Not only couldn't they bet attacked through the browser, they couldn't even be suborned or tricked by a social engineering attack into breaking the security (that's the main point of MAC, really). Unfortunately, Windows doesn't seem to have any kind of generic MAC mechanism that could be used this way.
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Web content shouldn't be able to affect browser functionality without the user's consent, just the same as an application shouldn't be able to disable a part of the OS.
Finally, and I've said this elsewhere: It's not "someone else's" material in the sense that they have complete and total ownership; it's "someone else's" material in the sense that they own copyright over it. Copyright is, by intent, limited: It controls reproduction, public performance, and several other actions, and no more. It also have a number of execeptions where reproduction and so forth can be permitted (for instance, exerpting for a review).
Pretending that ownership of the exclusive right to reproduce (and some other actions as well) is equivalent to complete and total control is a modern myth -- but if folks folks don't fight for that distinction, we may well lose it; and in that case, it's the public as a whole that misses out.
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Counter Example 1: Many popular games won't run without the CD in the drive. In other words, if you try to start the app without the CD, it will not do what you want (it will exit). Did you just lose control of your computer? Is your security at risk? Of course not.
Counter Example 2: Hard drives have firmware built into them. It is this firmware, not any software on the machine itself, which controls exactly where on the disk data is written. If this firmware fails, data can be lost. This firmware is in ROM, on the drive itself. When you save a file you are trusting it to do the right thing, whatsmore, there's no way you can actually tell what it is doing, or affect what it does. Have you lost control? Is your security compromised?
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of sites that go to great lengths to turn off functionality like copy, back button, print, etc. When a major corporation does it, suddenly it's a risk?
Google can only offer that information because they can employ DRM.
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, some people have a habit of right-clicking, then selecting the back option from there (I find that odd but I know people who do that). If they right-click a page and get a message screaming at them for daring to right-click, which they did to just get out of the page, they tend to get a negative impression of the site and feel like they are being trapped there.
So yes, I see it as a security vulnerability... because it means that a site has control over software installed on the user's computer and doesn't ask for consent before it goes changing how that software behaves. Maybe for some people it's not a big deal to find that the cut button doesn't work, but who says it'll stop there? What else is the browser going to roll over and obey? Allowing such basic functions to be turned off is a mistake that no software should ever make. It is indeed a security problem.
At the very least, the user should see a message displayed that says "This site has requested the following interface changes. Allow or deny?" (or similar.) Ideally, the browser should have a "permissions" setting set like Firefox's Javascript permissions list.
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 menu items
[X] Disabling right-click context menus
[X] Opening new windows (single-window mode)
And so on. Does that really look so unreasonable and out of place? Looks fine to me
Re:Security issue? (Score:3, Interesting)
Block sites from:
[X] Disabling menu items
[X] Disabling right-click context menus
[X] Opening new windows (single-window mode)
Actualy, in mozilla, (I'm not sure about firefox, but I'd assume it's the same) You'll get the annoying dialog, but then the context menu will apear anyway.
Re:Security issue? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, and I too would like firefox to disable right click blocking.
But bad reviews does not a security issue make, and that's the topic of this thread. While it's annoying and I'd like to see Firefox tackle the right click issue, I don't think we should go after the rest of what Google's DRM might entail.
(BTW, quick question.. If some of Google's DRM relied on a bug in Firefox, and that bug wa
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:They Own the Content (Score:4, Insightful)
However, according to this reasoning, book publishers (and newspaper publishers, and other producers of print media) should have control over lights in my environment, because I'm using them to read their stuff.
I prefer this approach: Part of the "terms of service" of making content publically available on the World Wide Web is accepting that someone can fetch that content and browse it in any reader they want.
Re:They Own the Content (Score:4, Insightful)
YOU seem to misunderstand something. It's OK, IN MY OPINION (have your own opinion, but don't screech at me for having one, and I won't scream at you for having yours) to do things like overlay with transparent GIFs, etc. that accomplish the same goal. But don't actively interfere with the user's expectations. If there's an image etc you don't want them to copy, overlay it with a transparent image (tirerack.com does this and it works well) but don't go disabling parts of the browser that the user expects to be there all the time. Who knows what they want/need it for?
IN MY PERSONAL OPINION, the balance I think is best is different than the one you think is best. Don't bitch at me for having a personal opinion and I won't yell at you for having one. Don't like it? Tough shit.
Re:Security issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Security issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though most of
Take your pick:
Google offers book searching with DRM
Google does not offer book searching
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Google Print FAQ: (Score:4, Informative)
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.
You can read the whole book on Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
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:Security issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or it can be viewed as an element of a DoS. Imagine a political website that has content they want to freely distribute. Infecting a number of site visitors with something, that as one of its effects, screws up copying or saving that content, is likely to be taken by most of the site's visitors as just a case of the site not having its HTML up to par. The site is effectively under an attack which it may never know happened, unless it gets enough visitor complaints.
The Point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Really who is going to print out all 600 pages of the newest Tom Clancey book, then goto the effort of binding them together. It'd cost more in paper, ink, time & energy than to just buy the book.
Sure if it were a cooking book or something someone might only want 1 page. But then again, if they want 1 page they can just write it down.
Seems like a big waste of time and money to me, but then again after the IPO they have money to blow.
Re:Security issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a *feature* of nearly all modern ECMAScript browsers: You can specify what happens when someone clicks on your page! This "feature" is how you (or more likely someone else) can create a swanky custom context-menu for a browser that matches the functionality in your OS. My goodness, the sky really IS falling!
Quit bitching, just because Google does it a little better than the average disable right-click [codelifter.com] page does... (right-click and hold it, hit enter for the Alert() and let go, your context menu will pop up)
WindowsUpdate uses document.contextMenu to disable right-clicking there too, but I don't see anyone bitching about Windows DRM for patch management, only for video/audio.
Oh, wait... M$ uses it, therefore it's evil. Bad Google! No cookie for you!
Hey retard (Score:5, Insightful)
Designers didn't pay for my machine, why should they have any right to control what I do with it.
It's doomed. (Score:5, Insightful)
i) To display the books, they've got to send that information to the browser, on your machine.
ii) Once its displayable on your machine, there is *absolutely* no way they can stop a determined person from printing it.
iii) If its going to work on Open-Souce browsers, the DRM must be fairly transparent.
iv) If it works on Open Source browsers, someone cleverer than me will modify that browser so that it works as the user intends, rather than the sender. Their only protection is the DMCA, which may stop a US coder from writing/distributing the hacked app, but the rest of us will be laughing.
Frankly, if Google were as smart as they're hyped to be, they'd know this.
It doesn't matter... (Score:4, Interesting)
The point is that it is "good enough" to stop the average person from lifting the material.
If you're determined enough, nothing is going to stop you from getting what you want.
Re:It's doomed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's doomed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want Google to drop this technique and go for something more proprietary that won't work at all?
Re:It's doomed. (Score:5, Funny)
while they work on that i'm gonna upgrade my memory.
Re:It's doomed. (Score:5, Informative)
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:It's doomed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's doomed. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's doomed. (Score:3, Insightful)
"ii) Once its displayable on your machine, there is *absolutely* no way they can stop a determined person from printing it."
Of course, it's like breaking encryption: it comes down to a matter of economics -- while determination and effort can be used to break it, it's likely to cost you more time and effort than spending money, such as going and buying a copy of the book.
Many things work on this principle.
here we go again. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:here we go again. (Score:5, Funny)
The BPAA (Book Publishers Association of America) has destroyed literature by stifling innovation and branding it's own pop authors that it force feeds to the masses. Why, I can't go outside without being forced to read the latest chart topper.
And really, why should I be forced to pay $20 for a whole book when only a few chapters in it are any good, and I could just download those from google or have a friend make me a copy.
Re:here we go again. (Score:3, Informative)
And how about Usenet?
Getting stuff for free? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
If that really is the case, then I'm extremely concerned that someone is doing this. Mainly because it adds extra ammunition to those who (wrongly) try to push the line that the only people who want to break DRM are those who want to rip people off.
Re:Getting stuff for free? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are 100% right.
It isn't about "security" or even "fair use" it's about the ability to cut and paste, save and print someone else's content without their permissions.
I could understand if you owned the books but you don't. Sounds like a good way to bite the hand that feeds you.
If you are really concerned with Google messing with your browser... don't go to any Google domain, ever. Add an entry in your HOSTS file for google, froogle, gmail, gbrowser and whatever else you'd like.
It's a free service, free in the sense that you are free not to use it.
Re:Getting stuff for free? (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the necessity for the DRM by Google -- without it their library of content will be severely limited; however, do not paint the actions of everyone attemting to circumvent the DRM.
Re:Getting stuff for free? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, for years people have had to write things down and now that we have computers don't act like you can't do so. Not to mention the fact that you can just "tile" the windows and transcribe the content into your favorite text editor.
I run a website and I would love to cut and paste portions of lots of books. Would be great elsewhere too, especially when fighting with
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
It already gave me a copy of the work for free, if I chose to burn it, make a hat out of it, or print it out, it's my business.
Re:Getting stuff for free? (Score:5, Informative)
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:Getting stuff for free? (Score:5, Funny)
If someone's only business model is to put some crap on a website, charge a bunch of money for access, and hope to sit back and watch the cash roll in, I think they will be in for a rude wakeup call.
You're absolutely right.
If that worked, the internet would be full of pornography in a heartbeat.
Oh. Wait a minu..
Nature of Information (Score:4, Insightful)
Information, by its very nature, is copyable. DRM schemes may stop a casual user from copying information, but it is theoretically impossible to make an invincible DRM system like this due to the very nature of information.
That having been said, Google is smart enough to know this. They have to put what they can in place in order to convince publishers to agree to their system.
Re:Nature of Information (Score:5, Informative)
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
Just get it from your cache! (Score:5, Funny)
TWW
So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this mean that Google is now officially an Evil Company(TM)?
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
We control the horizontal, we control the vertical (Score:4, Insightful)
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
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/lon
and then invoking that style inside a
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
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
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
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).
This is just the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of HTML onfuscation abuse is just the beginning. This is a general problem with any sufficiently rich presentation language. There are hundreds of different ways to obfuscate things.
Just wait until MS finally decides to properly support PNG alpha transparency! Combine this with CSS absolute positioning, and you'll start seeing images which are composited from many different layers of semi-translucent images; each of which is just noise of it's own. You also have already seen for a long time the cutting up of images into many small pieces.
This could be taken to an extreme as well. With absolute positioning you could also do this with text as well as images. Just position each letter on the page separately and randomize the order in which they appear in the HTML stream. Or even worse, use a custom downloaded font, where the glyphs are all randomized, so although it may look like an "A", it's really in the slot for a "Q"...try to cut and paste that.
Consider the PDF format as an extreme of where XHTML+CSS+DHTML+PNG can go wrt. obfuscation. Sure, the determined and savy can always get the text copied out; but that doesn't mean its not going to be very difficult.
Maybe we should all go back to ASCII and lynx.
Explanation Provided (Score:5, Informative)
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
Please provide demo URLs (Score:5, Interesting)
I do agree that this is a security problem. We already have options in some browsers (I use Firefox, for example) to block sites from changing status bar text, changing images, etc. And there was no fuss about that. I think disabling such basic functions as copy, paste, print falls in the same "no-no" category as changing statusbar text, changing images, etc.
A site presents a page in a certain way, but I as the user get to select how I view it, with what functions I want to view it, which parts of the site I want active and which ones I don't. You can't force me to accept what I don't want to accept. If I set my software to ignore part of your site, that's my choice, not yours.
You don't go disabling functions in users' browsers. You let them do that themselves. Conversely, you don't enable stuff the user didn't enable themselves.
Isn't it now about to be illegal to go changing peoples' browser settings via the use of spyware? Doesn't this come awfully close to doing the same thing? If it changes how my software behaves, it's awfully close to being malware.
Re:Please provide demo URLs (Score:5, Informative)
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
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
so it's easy to find.
Why use DRM in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
gerv talks about this (Score:5, Informative)
Google Print, And Clue Barriers [mozillazine.org]
Google Print Hacking Ideas [mozillazine.org]
For those with tinfoil hats (Score:5, Informative)
Now they're both [mozilla.org] mysteriously restricted to general viewing.
Re:For those with tinfoil hats (Score:5, Interesting)
If a DRM scheme depends on a bug in a product, and the product manufacturer corrects the bug to improve their product, has the DMCA been violated?
Basically, can a DRM scheme cement bugs in place by exploiting them?
DRM is necessary here (Score:3, Insightful)
What any man can do... (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems rather futile to try and restrict what people can do with images on the net. Given that fundamentally it's an open easily-parsed format, and wget is your friend, it ought to be relatively easy to write a harvester, if anyone could be bothered.
And there's the rub. Unless Google publishers are suffciently stupid (I've not seen much evidence of online stupidity in book publishers to date...) to put significant excepts from the book online, who'd care if you could download the images ?
At the end of the day, the best protection is to make sure that the good information is kept in the book, and the online imagery gives an indication of what you get when you pay for the book. This all presupposes the book is worth buying, of course, and perhaps that's the market they're trying to protect...
I guess this will protect against casual copying by the clueless, and that's probably all they're trying to do, but Google is every tech's favourite lovechild (brought about by those clever marketing peeps, which, er, aren''t most tech's favourite people. Well, moving swiftly on...). So Google are popular, and they do something that those tech peeps will react to (DRM), and quick as a flash there are workarounds. Hell, I expect a firefox plugin by tomorrow! A waste of time, perhaps ? Or just another example where the clueful (Mozilla users) have the advantage over the clueless (IE users
Simon.
Oooo! I know! (Score:3, Funny)
It's a documentation problem ... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Pages displaying your content have print, cut, copy, and save functionality disabled in order to protect your content."
to:
"Pages displaying your content have print, cut, copy, and save functionality disabled in order to protect your content from most users."
It's magic.
One-line bookmarklet for your convenience (Score:4, Informative)
It's not tough "DRM"... my university's local online student newspaper equivalent [wfu.edu] effectively does the same thing.
+ AdBlock on cleardot.gif (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to recall them using a simiar trick on the official site for Lord of the Rings when it came out.
Google has to do it, not make it work (Score:5, Insightful)
They have to show the suits at the publishing houses that they are being responsible, safeguarding the suits' ``intellectual property''. It doesn't really matter whether it actually works, just as it doesn't really matter if the features in the checklist on the box of software work. It's a tool for the salesman to use.
If this feature exists but really doesn't work, then the suits get the illusion that their ``intellectual property'' is protected, and they get free advertising of the try-before-you-buy variety. For this best of all possible worlds scenario, it has to work well enough to fool the suits, but not well enough to stop the rest of us.
Sounds to me as if Google has gotten it to work just about well enough to do a good job for all concerned: Google, us readers, and even the suits.
Re:Google has to do it, not make it work (Score:3, Insightful)
very easy to break... (Score:5, Informative)
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!)
Re:very easy to break... (Score:4, Interesting)
- Firefox 0.9.3
- Javascript on, but all the little check boxes off
- Not allowing any site to override my css
- Images from originating website only
I cannot even see any evidence of DRM, i can print, copy, paste, etc..
Perhaps I'm doing something wrong. ?
To bad it doesnt work at all (Score:3, Interesting)
I can copy text in both IE and Firefox...
Gerv did it (Score:5, Informative)
wget is forbidden (Score:5, Interesting)
Resolving print.google.com... done.
Connecting to print.google.com[64.233.161.118]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
09:44:53 ERROR 403: Forbidden.
Re:wget is forbidden (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh c'mon! You only need to change the user-agent string with --user-agent to something generic like MSIE or whatever.
Re:wget is forbidden (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy! Here's how I did it. (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Do a "View Source"
3. search for this: ".theimg { background-image:url"
4. copy the URL from that place, into a new browser.
5. ???
6. Profit!
scripting this should be ludicrously easy.
I can print with Safari (Score:3, Informative)
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.)
Google's DRM broken by Spiderzilla (Score:3, Interesting)
To reproduce:
- Install the Spiderzilla XPI. I installed with Moz v0.7.3 on WinXP.
- Visit google. I searched for "Mastering Digital Photography". The top result is a book.
- Fire up Spiderzilla (Tools -> Download this site)
- Use the defaults. I did.
- Go into whatever you named your project, then go into the "print.google.com" folder. The big images are what you're looking for.
- Use some OCR or something.
Note: I actually like Google. I don't think they're evil, nor do I think they're bad/wrong/stupid.
Well, maybe a little stupid - on this particular project. As many others have pointed out, google delivered content to your (my) screen. At that point, it's exceedingly difficult to prevent me from taking that content and running with it. Surely they expected this to happen and simply did the best they could to prevent it? I can't image they assumed their restrictive measures would defeat misuse attempts by anyone other than the most casual user of this service.
502 Error (Score:3, Informative)
Google Print is down (Score:3, Interesting)
You're missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "real" DRM here isn't DRM. As a previous post so astutely pointed out, DRM is schitzophrenic by nature: it involves trying to give someone something without *actually* giving it to them.
Google's "real" protection is that the service won't let you view more than a certain percentage of the book in any given month. That percentage is determined by the book's publisher at submssion time, anywhere from 20% to 100%.
Even if you can copy/paste/print, you're still only going to get a portion of the book - certainly not enough to replace a valid sale. Disabling that functionailty basically returns us to the age of photocopying a few pages of a book/article in a library. Except now we can search, so it's faster.
If one solution is as simple as "grab th data from your browser's cache" this is clearly meant to only stop the "average" user, something that is in very short supply here on
Here's to hoping this headline appearing on
Why Google is right to do this (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say that you buy a song/movie and it has DRM which restricts the way you use it - you would be justified in removing the DRM to use it in your own way (provided that you engage in 'fair' use). The content that Google displays in its book search results are *NOT* your media. You do not own it, you have not paid for it and Google is providing it to you as a courtesy. To provide it, they have to ensure that you do not make copies of it since even Google does not own the media to be able to give it away to you. Nothing wrong in restricting your options here.
2. OMG they have control over the browser!
Yes they do not ask you before disabling your browser options. But this does not install a trojan, or do anything permanent with your computer like other sites do. If you do not like the fact that your options have been reduced on that page, all you have to do is hit the back button and scram. (It's like complaining that a particular room in someone else's house is too hot - if you don't like it, get outta there!)
3. The DRM can be disabled.
Sure, it can. If one man can enable it, another man can disable it. The point, as has been noted in several places, on several occassions is that the average person cannot disable it. And no, you cannot automate the process to get complete books since the guys sitting at Google are not stupid and they will have measures built in to prevent automated downloading of entire books (through whatever strategies - searching repeatedly etc)
And yes, I have to mention this : Google has shown me how to push the limits of HTML and scripting - First with Gmail and now with Google Print - they are doing stuff that looks like pure art to the programmer within me. Hurray for ingenuity!
Oh, heavens, yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus, people, do we have to break everything just for the sake of breaking it? And do we have to bring in the melodrama? As someone mentioned above, the only reason Google *can* offer this is because of the DRM. Why do we have to immediately set to destroying every new toy we get with a hammer?
At some point all information will be digital, and if we don't ever let people have a way to make money from creating content, they'll STOP CREATING THE CONTENT. And then I guess we'll have gotten our way, huh?
Break it in one minute with IE, no less. (Score:4, Informative)
-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/prin
-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.
Nothing to see here, move along. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's simple - the image is done as the background image for an HTML element. There's nothing to stop you linking directly to the content: sample image [google.com], for example.
You can't right click on it because it's a background graphic. But you sure as hell could write a robot script that went and downloaded pages.
If they're clever, they'll watermark each image as it is served, so they can tell who's copying what (well, down to the originating IP, anyway).
Here's one way to fix this "DRM" on Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
2. Add this URL to its block list:
http://print.google.com/images/cleardot.gi
3. Disable "collapse blocked elements" in Adblock while browsing Google Print.
4. Pick "View Background Image", then "Save Image As..."
I guess someone will come up with a Firefox extension in no time that will just add a context menu option called "Save Background Image as..."
Re:First, how go I get to Google Print (Score:5, Informative)
Re:First, how go I get to Google Print (Score:3, Informative)
-1 Troll (Score:3, Informative)
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.