No longer able to highlight text in fics

[twitchy-bunnies.livejournal.com]

Not just me, right? If this is permanent, my best guess is that it was done to deter plagiarism by putting an end to people being able to just right-click copy whole stories.

10/11/2013 update: "Basic copy protection of story content within modern browsers. Currently it is enabled for all but authors will be able to disable/enable this feature in a coming update."

http://blog.fictionpress.com/2013/10/11/languages-for-navigation/#comments

No clue why they're just now telling us this, but hallelujah at it being optional \o/

Comments

[lordhellebore]

It's the same for me, too. And preventing plagiarism sounds like the only reasonable explanation. Though it makes reccing/discussion way more annoying, having to type out excerpts etc.

[dannylionthe1st.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the other browsers, but in Chrome you can click "View Page Source" scroll down and it's there. Granted, it's one giant paragraph, but you can always control F to find what you were looking for. It's a little harder, but that's a work around if you don't want to type. :)

[roeskva]

It's same here too. Which is actually pretty annoying, as I post on ffnet first, and then copy-paste my fic on another archive - this is the only way I have found to make that archive not screw up my formatting. Nothing else seems to work.

Fortunately, the block on ffnet can easily be circumvented. The easiest thing in firefox (probably work other places as well), is to click "View" -> "Page style" -> "No style".

Yes, the top of the page and such looks ugly, but the fic itself is fine :) Works for me, at least.

[twitchy-bunnies.livejournal.com]

Just tried this out and it worked for me as well; thank you ;DD

[montara81.livejournal.com]

I've installed the Add-on: Greasemonkey and then the userscript: Fanfiction net, make text selectable again. Now I can copy-paste like before :)

[roseriotgrrrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks that worked perfectly!

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

Same for me. I thought my mouse was acting up. I tried disabling JavaScript and am still unable to select and copy text.

[(Anonymous)]

Seems to be an issue in most browsers. Someone posted on the blog that copy/paste is still working in IE8, so I went and checked on my old laptop, and it is.

Weird that they'd disable it in everything else but not in IE8

[roeskva]

As far as I understand, it is a CSS thing they have done. That is why it works to use "No style" for page style. That turns off any CSS on a page.

IE8 doesn't interpret CSS correctly (different, at any rate) - that was one of the problems with it, but now it seems to have become a feature :)

[jillyjames]

seems like this 'change' hinders the readers more than plagiarizers. There are too many ways to get at the text to really hinder someone who wants to steal it. But it seriously impacts the ability of readers to save works. We all know how often stories are purged, and copying off your favorites is the only sane thing to do if you want to be able to read it again.

As it stands now, I'll have to dedicate a browser to using ff.net, and disable styles. Very annoying.

[bluefirebird.livejournal.com]

I recommend this tool for archiving stories, http://www.fanfictiondownloader.net/ (http://www.fanfictiondownloader.net/) works with WWOMB & AO3 too plus a number of fandom specific sites.

I only save in html format, so can't vouch for any of the other formats.
I used to bookmark stories and then realised that so many excellent ones (especially on FFnet) were getting deleted that I save first and ask questions later now!

Once installed save the entire story in a few clicks, without worrying which chapters have been updated since you last looked.


Sorry to spam the comments here by reply to several people individually - and I have no connection with the author of the program.

[(Anonymous)]

Extortion in the ffnet forums posted this fix for firefox users:
1) Download RightToClick add-on
2) Install, restart firefox as prompted
3) Click on add-on button on your browser: looks like a yellow thin mouse arrow.
Note: You only need the "Disable page cut/copy/paste/text-selection handlers" option checked. You can also specify to always use this on ffnet rather than having to click the button every time.

I don't know if there are similar add-ons for Chrome, IE, or Safari. Opera reportedly has no problems.

[jillyjames]

In which forum is this being discussed?

[(Anonymous)]

I have been victim of people cut and pasting from my stories to theirs (both between fanfiction.net and outside to other blogs) I was happy to see that fanfiction.net is at least attempting to address the problem. Too bad that it can be so easily circumvented.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that it would be good to put in some story protection measures, but I feel that this is the wrong way to go about it. Like you said, it's rather easy to circumvent. I can't personally think of a way to avoid the stories being copied to outside blogs, but I think that they could put in some kind of text search-and-match thing that would look for similar (as in, almost the same) chapters already posted and not allow for the posting of a new one without review.

Of course, with the number of stories, that might be an expensive algorithm.

[(Anonymous)]

I actually use highlighting to keep track of where i am.
Also, Ctrl+a still works.
Fanfiction.net tried and failed.

[twitchy-bunnies.livejournal.com]

Does it? After Ctrl+Ai'ing, when I tried to paste in notepad, only the area where the summary is actually showed up. Is there something else I need to do?

oh, just for highlighting - never mind!

[dmxrated.livejournal.com]

It says in the site's Terms of Service that the site's staff are not responsible for protecting anyone's work, only the work's owner is. A better idea might be to create a feature that allows Google to find matches or near-matches of text anywhere on the Internet, if such a thing doesn't exist already. I have recently seen something similar that allows people to find photoshopped or the original versions of a given image, so it can't be that hard.

[kagenoneko-maat.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if they gave us tools that would help us protect our work since it is expected of us to protect it.

[(Anonymous)]

for anyone with stylish (for either firefox or chrome) you can use, i just made and tested it. its not the prettiest option but it works

http://userstyles.org/styles/93873/fanfiction-net-make-text-copiable-again?r=1381354328 (http://userstyles.org/styles/93873/fanfiction-net-make-text-copiable-again?r=1381354328)

if that doesnt work remove the spaces below
userstyles. org/ styles/ 93873/ fanfiction-net-make-text-copiable-again ?r=1381354328

[(Anonymous)]

omg Yesss thank you. I used the first and it worked like charm!

[jason duke (from livejournal.com)]

for anyone with stylish (for either firefox or chrome) you can use, i just made and tested it. its not the prettiest option but it works

remove the spaces below to get the link
userstyles (dot) org / styles / 93873 / fanfiction-net- make-text- copiable-again ? r = 1381354328

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, I'm slow... I only noticed it now... and "preventing plagiarism" does sound like pretty useless reasoning to me (if someone really wanted to plagiarise(I can't even write it right) they would find workarounds for it as people here did) only thing it did was to annoy me because I tend to highlight as i read the fics, so I continue to read where I left off if something else comes up and I have to leave computer alone or did something else in meantime ...

[astral201.livejournal.com]

This matter has annoyed me for days. Sent several emails and Twits to ff.net. No reaction. I like to copy complete stories only for my Kindle and then read them in my own time usually at bedtime. What do they expect that I take my desktop to bed with me! Even my laptop is too inconvenient and heavy. Anyway lets hope they come to their senses. In the mean time your solution worked fine montara81. Many thanks!

[twitchy-bunnies.livejournal.com]

I don't have a kindle, but I put stories on my nextbook so I have something to read on the ride home (my classes don't let out until late, and by then it's too dark to be able to read a book). It also came in handy during the aftermath of sandy. We didn't have electricity for awhile, and fanfic was a great way of passing time when it got too late to read or play board games.

FFN finally commented on this via their blog (added it to the post). I don't know why they couldn't have given people a head's up.

[deeplyshalllow.livejournal.com]

As someone who has been a victim of copy and paste plagerism I still think this change is still more of a hinderance than a help. I like being able to copy and paste passages of stories for multiple reasons - the most important of which is the copy and paste reviews (which are in many ways my favourites) which this will pretty much kill, we also run annual fanfic awards on our section where the titles of the award categories (and later the nominations) are put on a fanfic - not being able to copy and paste these into reviews is going to seriously slow everyone nominating and voting down.

[cafecomics.livejournal.com]

They're doing it via css, so it's super easy to defeat (brute force version : disable CSS).

If you have Stylish installed in your Firefox/Seamonkey/Chrome, just create a new rule for fanfiction.net and add this line.

For Gecko-based browsers (Firefox/Seamonkey):

.nocopy {-moz-user-select:text!important;}

For Chrome:

.nocopy {-webkit-user-select:text!important;}

The Chrome variant should also work for Safari if you find a way to add user styles.

[kagenoneko-maat.livejournal.com]

Would doing this work since they have placed the nocopy CSS in the external style sheet?

[montara81.livejournal.com]

For those who installed "Fanfiction (dot) net, make text selectable again" a couple of days ago and today couldn't select text again, you just need to reinstall the script, they have a new version now that needs to be installed manually.

I've also restarted Mozilla, too, just to be sure but maybe it's not necessary...

Good luck! :)

[(Anonymous)]

It's actually really annoying for me because I have this need to keep the story aligned with page/screen boundaries. (I have minor OCD, like the actual condition, not the TV version or "I'm kinda OCD about that"; the "minor" part is that the result of not following the behaviors in question leads to anxiety levels I can deal with, usually, although it's still something to avoid when I'm trying to enjoy myself, like, say, when I'm sitting back and reading a story.) So, if I accidentally hit an arrow key or if I need to toggle fullscreen (say, if I was reading fullscreen, then a friend I want to talk to comes online, so I have to turn off fullscreen so I can keep an eye on the IRC or Skype or Gajim window), then I need to go back to the top, then page down (or space bar) back to where I was. The way I usually deal with that (and always used to on FFN) is to select a nice, big, obvious chunk (say, everything currently visible on the screen), then hit Home, then hold PgDn until some blue flashes by, after which it's usually only a couple of PgUp taps to get back to where I was. The ability to highlight is particularly important when I'm reading a really long chapter or story (say, a single-chapter novel-length fic, or a chapter of Embers).

It's a pain in the ass to find where I was without highlighting, and my concerns have absolutely nothing to do with copying. Heck, the CSS that disables highlighting is right next to CSS that disables copying! Why is it necessary to disable highlighting if copying is already disabled?

[tripleransom.livejournal.com]

Seems to me the easiest workaround is to post everything to AO3 instead.

[(Anonymous)]

You want a rant for ff.net? I will give you a rant. Too many decent authors with really good stories get low or no reviews in contrast to the load of crap authors who write the most retarded stories with "mary sue", self insert author, etc and overall downright garbage stories get tons of reviews. Also the douchebags who write twilight stories have inserted their pile of dung heap stories in the twilight zone television section. WTF?!?!?!?!?

[(Anonymous)]

This is a lot like EA's approach to piracy by forcing all the games to be online which means you cannot play them on you're own computer. You technically don't own you're own copy.

Thanks Fan Fiction site! Pretty soon we will all have to have an RFID chip to even view the site as that's where society is headed.

[(Anonymous)]

This was super annoying! I highlight as I read to track where I am in the page.
If you're on chrome, I made a quick chrome extension that let's you highlight in peace ;)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/selectable/jcidlhgdoojamkbpmhbpgldmajnobefd

[(Anonymous)]

This was super annoying! I highlight as I read to track where I am in the page.
If you're on chrome, I made a quick chrome extension that let's you highlight in peace ;)

It's a free app on the chrome app store. You can find it by searching the extensions for 'Selectable'

[risinggundam04.livejournal.com]

I looked this up on Google and tried it, you can go to the mobile version of FF.net and then you can highlight and copy things.