HACKING THE WEB: UNLOCK COPYING ON A WEBSITE

 

 

Introduction

If you are a web user, you may sometimes notice  that webpages prevent you from copying content.  This is because they want you to sign up to unlock this option or they want the content on their website not to be republished by others. Anyway, this is kind of nonsense because you can copy it with a simple workaround. Here it is.

 

Getting started

To get started, you need a computer with Google Chrome installed and to know how to open DevTools on your browser, which is a window with tools we’ll use,  on a chosen webpage. You can do that simply by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I (or Cmd+Alt+I on a Mac).

An example of copy blocking is Skuola.net (image below), which I’ll use for this tutorial: if you want to follow step by step, you can open this page.

 

 

The “hack”

To start “hacking”, open DevTools (see Introduction) and find an icon on the top left corner (of DevTools) made of a square and a cursor (the icon inside the red circle on the following image): click it and then move the mouse (without clicking anything) on the text you’re trying to copy, now click on it.

  

 

Now, press Ctrl+Shift+P (Cmd+Shift+P on Mac) and you’ll see a search box: Type “event” (1) and click on “Show Event Listeners” (2).

  

On the bottom of DevTools, you should see a list with lots of triangles: find the one called “copy” (1) and click on it.

Now you should find other items inside this list: make sure to click every “Remove” present (2). If you do everything correctly, “copy” will disappear from the list.

  

 Now, to copy the content, select the wanted text and press Ctrl+C (or Cmd+C on Mac) to copy (using right click would produce the same copy warning, which prevents copying).

 GIORGIO B., 4sc