Geez, I read about this on RAME, but I couldn't believe they actually did this. Go to any page on ADE that has a decent sized picture on it and try to "right click". You'll get a message saying "Right Click Disabled".
I guess they're trying to keep people from stealing their images, but is this really worth it? Now we can't "Open in a new window". The solution is to disable , but I refuse to do that just for one silly little site.
What happens when they realize that in IE 6.0, you don't need to right click to save images. Are they going to somehow refuse connections to IE 6.0 browsers?
They actually disabled right click for the entire site, any link, not just pictures.
exerpted and edited from my RAME reply:
As a web designer, I find this a bit abhorrent. Miuch like these new borderless pop-up ads which are wreaking havoc with the way some people (like blind people who rely on screen-readers) surf; this anti-right click crusade seems silly. I mean, they're watermarking all of their images with a huge ADE now... why not let me choose how to view your site?
I agree that eliminating right-clicks it is a bad design choice.
As far as seeing two images side by side... with IE (and Nutsrcape too I think.. haven't used it in a long time), you can hit CONTROL+N which opens a new window with the current page loaded.. so you can load the big front cover, hit control+N then follow the link for big back over. Two windows, just as before -- but you have to go thru a bigger hoop to get to something that (IMHO) should be a click away.
Of course, you could use another retailer's site (and tell ADE you're doing so) to view the box cover art and then make your order at ADE or wherever you choose...
Or, just turn off scripting, and you get your right click back. (But that's an unfair hassle...) :-)
In Empire's defense I support their decision to try to make is as difficult as they possibly can for people to steal their images. We are contacted on a weekly basis by brand new stores that want to join the price search program. I always check out their sites and at least half the time I find they are using boxcover images stolen from Empire, Five Star, DVD Xtreme or DVD Exotic.
Most people don't realize that there is a lot of time involved in providing high quality box cover art. Sure, some of the studios provide digital boxcover images but most of them are shitty quality or are the wrong size. IN order to get nice looking images you have to scan a cover, resize it( small front, large front, small back, large back), color correct, sharpen, apply the watermark, etc. I would guess that after you get the process down to a science you can only do 5 or 6 DVDs per hour. That's a shitload of time to invest when you have over 8000 titles for sale. A startup store with a fast connection and a half decent programmer good save thousands of hours of time.
It's not only stores that are stealing images. You would not believe how many people are selling DVD smut on Ebay and linking the images to a store's server.
I completely understand them wanting to do something about people stealing their images, or linking to their pics from offsite, but their "no right clicking" policy doesn't solve the problem.
Like I've mentioned before, it's still possible to save images, and if someone REALLY wants to externally link to one of their pics, it's still possible to figure out the correct link.
So they may stop some of the less tech-savy offenders, but I'm guessing that they are ticking off quite a few of their real customers in the process. (me included)
I run a pretty large and busy non-porn website and would like to interject something here. Blocking right clicks in no way, shape or form does anything to protect an image. There are some very effective file protection methods that use checking the referring URL or dynamicly changing links and file names, but they're only semi-effective. The links are viewable in the source code and that can't be blocked out since it's browser-rendered. So it only takes a 2 second peek at the code to get the full image path. Besides, anyone with a site-ripper like BlackWidow doesn't even need the source code to mass download. All a site that's using a method like that is doing is proving that:
1) They don't care about their customers. 2) Their programmers/coders/webmaster or server-security gurus don't have a clue about what they're doing and just downloaded a script in the mistaken belief that it'll work.
Vote with your wallets. Just dash off a simple note to the site and tell them why you'll be shopping elsewhere. The no-right click script will be gone in a week.
Yes I don't like the disabling of Right clicks either. I've installed Internet Explorer's Web Accessories so I can right click on a picture and Zoom In or Zoom Out on it. I even use it on sites that offer large sized covers like ADE and tha 5-Star. For me disabling all right clicks makes it that much hadder to look at details on covers and other images.
Well, never let it be said that Adult DVD Empire doesn't listen to out customers. I have read your complaints, and I hog tied our programmers until they finally complied with your well placed complaints.
The right click function is now re-enabled on our entire site.
Also...(drum roll please)...the cast lists have finally been added to the "recent release" list.
I want to thank everyone for their input - you are why we are here.
I thought disabling the right click totally sucked also, and I'm glad to see it restored. I would have thought the overly large and unattractive watermark ADE is using would discourage many people from using the images.
That said, it's not a very effective way to stop saving an image anyway. A screen capture utility such as American Systems Print Screen Deluxe can easily save an entire screen or part of a screen to disk. It saves in BMP and then you can covert it to JPG or whatever.
It takes me about 15 minutes to scan the front and back of a boxcover for my site. I use Paintshop Pro to fix up the images. If I went really fast, I think I could do it in ten minutes. I did some math and determined that if an online store got 200 new releases per month, it would take about fifty hours to scan the boxes. A substantial amount of time, but not unreasonable since it only has to be done once and it is the equivilent to an in store display of the merchandise.
I'm surprised the studios do not offer high quality scans of their product for use by retailers, reviews, fans and anyone else who has a need for them. Seems like good promotion of ther product to me. Anabolic has pretty good scans posted on their site, but I've not seen many others.
