Copying texts from copy protected sites

Shihab Uddin Ahmed | August 15, 2012

imagesHow to copy texts from copy protected sites?

Copying texts from websites are not always easy. Some websites have copy protection codes so that no one can select and copy the texts.

But still you have chance to copy those texts. I will mention two ways to do it.

Method one

You may check the source code of the page from where you are trying to copy texts. For Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome press Ctrl+u to see the source code. You will also find view source code option in the menus of all browsers including Internet Explorer.

Now locate the Body of the page. The body of any page is between <body> and </body>. Copy and paste this portion to word processing software like Microsoft Word.

Save this file and remove all unnecessary html tags like <p>, <em>, etc.

Now the texts are ready to use.

Method two

This method is bit easier, but you will need little knowledge on html code. At first save the page to your computer from where you want to copy texts. Then open the html file by Notepad program. You may download Notepad program freely from http://notepad-plus-plus.org if you don’t have any.

After opening the html file by Notepad find the texts to be copied. You will find some tags and attributes above the texts which are preventing copy operation.

Delete this tag and close the file after saving it. Now open the html file by your browser. This time you will be able to copy the texts.

Following html code will demonstrate the process:


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>From Reading Table</title>
</head>
<body>
<center><a href="http://fromreadingtable.com/?p=273"><h2>Copying texts from copy protected sites</h2></a></center>
<hr/>
You can select and copy text from this portion of the page. Check the html code of this section.
<br/>
<br/>
<div style="-moz-user-select: none; cursor: default;" unselectable="on">
You can’t select and copy texts from this portion of the page. Check the html code of this section.
</div>
<br/>
<b>Exercise:</b>
<div style="-moz-user-select: none; cursor: default;" unselectable="on">
We have made this portion of the page unselectable and hence it can’t be copied. Check the html code and modify it so that it can be copied from browser.
</div>
<br/>
<b>Caution:</b>You can use copied texts for your personal use. But many websites have copyrights. So contact them before using for other purposes to avoid legal action.
<br/>
<hr/>
<center><a href="http://www.fromreadingtable.com">&copy;FromReadingTable.com</a></center>
</body>
</html>

Download code

(Right click on your mouse and then select ‘save link as’ or ‘save target as’.)

Caution: You can use copied texts for your personal use. But many websites have copyrights. So contact them before using for other purposes to avoid legal action.

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