[LINK] protecting online content - AFR technique

[andrew clarke]

On Mon 2008-04-28 12:44:42 UTC+1000, Gordon Keith (gordonkeith at acslink.net.au) wrote:

> > Someone pointed out to me that the AFR ( http://www.afr.com/ ) has
> > implemented some CSS magic to provide an extra level of frustration to
> > online content copiers: highlighted story text only grabs every other
> > letter and so impedes the good old copy/paste.
> >
> > The story text is effectively doubled, but there is even a little more,
> > since each of the two versions needs interleaved   between the
> > alternate characters to be inserted to implement the magic.
> >
> > Cute.
> 
> Depending on your browser.
> 
> My browser shows the two copies of the story nicely overlaying each other, but 
> they also overlay the navigation which should be at the bottom of the page so 
> half the article is very hard to read.

I see the same rendering problem using Firefox 3.0 beta 5 with
NoScript. Temporarily allowing JavaScript from afr.com seems to fix
the problem.  Looking at the HTML source code, the "protected" text is
simply playing around with CSS - no JavaScript involved - so I think
the problem you're seeing is unrelated to the protection.

Presumably all search engines are completely unable to index AFR's
content because of their CSS interleaving, so if you're trying to find
an AFR article you remember reading last week (but you don't remember
if it was in the AFR) you probably won't be able to use Google to
locate it.

And too bad if you want to copy a snippet of text from the article!
Or even a person's name.

I wonder if the same draconian restrictions apply to AFR subscribers?