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Johnson & Johnson bans right-clicking on its website

By Dominic Jones on September 24, 2006

I HAVE seen a lot of bad decisions made on corporate websites over the years, but this may be the worst by far.

Apparently in an effort to stop people copying photographs from its website, health care giant Johnson & Johnson has coded its pages to make it impossible for people to use the right-click button on their mouse.

prompt

This is the unfriendly system prompt users get from J&J's website when they try to perform tasks using the right button on their mouse.

The move makes the company’s website extremely frustrating to use and obstructs legitimate users like investors and journalists from performing common tasks like:

  • copying and pasting text;
  • saving PDFs;
  • subscribing to RSS feeds;
  • creating shortcuts;
  • bookmarking pages;
  • opening links in new browser windows or tabs;
  • viewing the page source code; and,
  • performing a range of other tasks depending on their software.

Treating all users like criminals

Worst of all, Johnson & Johnson’s implementation of the right-click restrictions treats all the company’s web users as criminals without achieving its intended objectives of preventing copyright infringement.

The company is the first we have seen to disable right-clicking on a corporate website in all the years we have been reviewing investor relations websites.

Amateur webmasters sometimes disable right-clicking on their websites — a very rare occurrence, by the way — when they want to prevent people from copying photographs or other content from their sites.

They do this by inserting JavaScript into their pages that disables the right mouse button functionality in users’ browser software. J&J has also inserted code in its pages to disable the picture toolbar in user’s browsers.

If you don’t want people to use it, don’t post it

But here’s the rub. These measures don’t stop people who are bent on stealing content from websites. It is very easy for an even modestly experienced computer user to circumvent J&J’s blocking script.

screenshot showing right click activitated

Simply by turning off JavaScript (setting security to "high" in IE) you can ignore J&J's right-click blocking script and regain normal functionality. This underscores how pointless the company's copyright protection attempt is. It hurts the very people who are least likely to steal.

All you have to do is disable JavaScript in your browser — it takes 5 seconds tops — and you will have full use of your right mouse button again. I did that, as you can see from the screen grab below.

Even advanced techniques for trying to prevent people copying images and other content from a website are not foolproof. The only sure way to prevent people stealing your website content is to not put it online in the first place.

Chasing people away

As it stands, by disabling right-clicking Johnson & Johnson is undermining its ability to build online relationships with interested stakeholders. It is insulting its audience, acting like an overly possessive child that won’t share its toys, and ultimately discouraging people from visiting or using its website resources.

Want proof? Well, consider this. We first noticed the blocking script during our recent review of J&J’s IR website for the World’s Best IR Websites program.

It became an issue when we needed to copy the link location for a podcast feed into a feed reader. The way I normally do this is to right click the link, copy the location and paste it into the feed reader.

Screenshot of Johnson and Johnson's website showing prompt that right clicking in disabled

Trying to copy the podcast url as the company advices cannot be achieved by right-clicking and choosing to copy it.

Off course, I couldn’t do this on J&J’s site, even though the company itself invites users to copy and paste the link in its explanation of how to use its podcast feed (see below).

In effect, the company is making it exceptionally difficult for people to subscribe to receive updates. The objective here should be to encourage as many people as possible to subscribe, not chase them away by making it harder for them to do so.

And chase them away is exactly what the company seems to be doing. For instance, J&J only has four people subscribed to its podcasts on Bloglines, the biggest online feed reader. That’s a sorry number for a company of J&J’s size and profile.

When all things are taken into account, J&J’s decision to disable right-clicking is just incredibly stupid. It demonstrates a lack of clear thought and an almost knee-jerk overreaction to something that is likely not a big problem anyway.

After all, who wants to steal pictures of baby powder bottles?

P.S. If you want to see what pictures are on J&J’s website, here’s 37 pages of them on Google’s image search site


Dominic Jones

Dominic (bio & disclosures) is IR Web Report‘s founder and an online investor relations consultant. He advises leading public companies and investor relations service providers worldwide on using the web for disclosure, engagement and profile building. You can contact him via the contacts page.

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Responses

  • http://cakemonster.net moe

    Use Firefox with Web Developer Extension, disable javascript without digging through the browser settings and right click all you want.

  • matt

    Anyone can perform any of the above listed “common tasks” without disabling JavaScript. This can be accomplished via keyboard shortcuts and by using the menu bar. Actually, if you know the right keyboard shortcuts, you can get to the menu bar without even using the mouse, allowing you to achieve success even should J&J disable left-clicking in the future.

    This outrage expressed here is pointless, and this is far from the worst decision ever made concerning a corporate website.

  • mark

    One of the dumbest things done on a corporate website that I’ve seen.

    BTW the average user, which I guess the J&J site is designed for, isn’t using Firefox with Chris’ developer extension. And most users don’t know keyboard shortcuts.

    Even so, with all these ways to get around the script, why bother in the first place. It just hurts the innocent.

  • http://www.irwebreport.com/daily Dominic Jones

    Moe, actually I do have the developer extension installed, but this isn’t about me. It’s about the impact on people who do not have FF and who don’t even know which version of IE they have. That’s 85% of the web population, depending on whose stats you want to use.

    Matt, your point about using the menus is correct, but it also underscores how pointless the J&J tactic is. How about a few examples of what you’ve seen that’s worse than this?

  • matt

    Dominic,

    It never ceases to amaze me how unwilling the majority of people seem to be to learn to really use the things that they come in contact with on a daily basis. I don’t expect that everyone is going to keep a full list of keyboard shortcuts tucked away in their heads, but even my ten-year-old knows CTRL+C and CTRL+V. You are of course correct in pointing out the uselessness of attempting to obfuscate by disabling right-clicks, and I would add to the list the technique of putting images in the background with CSS, or hiding the real images behind transparent .gif images; there has always been more than one way to skin these particular cats. The only people that this will work on are the extremely ignorant. I don’t mean stupid; I mean ignorant. And the onus to not be ignorant lies with the user, with the ignorant themselves. This is not to say that this particular implementation of JavaScript isn’t silly, because it most certainly is. The point is that people, whatever percentage it is that do not know the alternate ways to the same goal, should treat themselves to a little knowledge.

    As far as other examples goes, the ones that stick out most in my mind are things like the use of Flash in an e-commerce interface. I personally love Flash and use it exclusively for my own website, but sometimes I just want to buy something already. Here’s another: T-Mobile does not allow you to cancel your HotSpot account online. Why the hell not? I think I know the answer, but that doesn’t excuse them. It’s the same with almost any support or cancellation service. Try getting some help and you are bound to end up nowhere. If, on the other hand, you are calling the billing department to finally make a payment, you will get a human on the phone – nine times out of ten – on the first attempt.

  • http://www.irwebreport.com/ IR Daily

    Matt,

    Yeah, the “Hotel California trap” — you can sign up for anything online but you can never leave online. You have to call, sometimes long distance.

    Worst is when you have to give them your credit card details for a free trial and them discover that if you don’t like the service you have to call to cancel.

    Why don’t marketers get that people don’t like being deceived and probably never will do business with their companies again?

    Something struck me about J&J while writing this. Probably a large part of their audience is made up of elderly people, who often are not very experienced with computers.

    These people might be using the site to get information on drugs or products they are using. Since they are elderly, some might have difficulty reading text on the screen. If they use FF, which isn’t likely, they can increase the text size (if they know how). If they use IE, they cannot increase the text size (except if they’re on IE 7 and use the new zoom function.)

    One scenario I can see is these people wanting to copy information from the screen to paste into a wordprocessor so they can increase the text size. Yes, it’s a small group, but many low-vision and blind users do this because they find that their screen readers work better with Word than with websites.

    So J&J is potentially exposing itself to serious risks here if a customer misuses a product because they were not able to obtain information on how to use it correctly due to an inability to copy information from the site.

    It’s a remote risk, yes, but it’s the kind of scenario that website owners have to think about . Here, I think it is clear that J&J didn’t think this through at all. And now the whole world can see.

  • matt

    That’s certainly valid, and to tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought of it. In fact, I was kind of wondering who would ever go to Johnson & Johnson’s site in the first place. Watching a commercial on television about Tylenol, and being advised that I can find out more at http://www.tylenol.com, well, somehow it never occurred to me to actually go and do any kind of pain-killer research on a website. I find it sort of laughable, actually, though I do see your point.

    Having said that, it is in fact quite easy to increase the text size in IE6, by using the menu and selecting “View –> Text Size –>” and choosing one of the five sizes offered there. It is even possible to force IE6 to use a style sheet of your own making (which can be set under the Internet Options, General tab). Holding the CTRL key and using the scroll wheel is another way to change the text size in IE6.

    The only reason I can think of off-hand for putting the anti-right-click JavaScript on a web page is to prevent the pilfering of images. Perhaps there is some other reason, but in the spirit of wild speculation, my intuition tells me that one of the new guys picked up a copy of “JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook” or some such thing.

    From my perspective, scripts like these are not all that intrusive, but that’s mostly because I avoid using the mouse at all whenever I can get away with it. As many hours every day as I spend using a computer, it is just not sane to not take advantage of the increased efficiency that the keyboard shortcuts afford. So while I understand that everyone, say the vast majority even, may not be as intimate with CTRL+A/C/X/V or WIN+D/E/R or CTRL/ALT+TAB or ALT+F/CTRL+W (to name a few) as I am, I think it would be prudent for anyone who spends a decent proportion of his time with computers, even if it is just the internet, to familiarize himself with some of the alternative controls. In fact, whenever I see someone fumbling around the screen with his mouse like a drunken whore in the middle of a deserted casino, I feel almost obligated to show them the light.

    I also understand that most people view the mouse as the default human-interface device, and I would even go so far as to say that many people think that it is the only human-interface device, which is where those with the knowledge that this is not the case can help out those who do not have that knowledge. If one of my own parents, in their downward spiral toward true senility, were to reveal that they were struggling with something to the point of complete frustration and even resignation, I would be the first one there to help them out. For the example you gave, even the least-savvy son or daughter could do a little research and find out how to cook up a custom style sheet for IE ( http://www.microsoft.com/enable/default.aspx ), or make up a quick-reference card with useful keyboard shortcuts or diagrammed menu trees.

    I’m going to veer a little here, but my complaint with the concept that Johnson & Johnson is unnecessarily screwing with people comes from what I think is a more general flaw in the way that people interact with the world around them. Consider a story told to me by one of my former co-workers about his evening at the movie theater. He went to see a show at one of the most popular and crowded theaters in Los Angeles on Friday night. He arrived approximately ten minutes before the previews started and found to his dismay that all of the “good” seats were taken, relegating him to one extreme end of the front row or other. His reaction to this circumstance was to march right back up to the ticket counter and demand a refund. Showing up a little earlier was not ever on his list of strategies to consider (as evidenced by the glazed-over look on his face when I mentioned it). I can only surmise that this is but one manifestation of the ever-increasing trend of an almost sociopathic sense of entitlement which an alarming number of individuals and special-interest groups of all kinds cling to. In life, there are a finite number of parameters over which any particular individual has complete control. It is in the interest of the particular individual to set those parameters for maximum advantage.

    In other words, let Johnson & Johnson do whatever they want, as they will. If a person goes to J&J’s website and cannot achieve what they want – after exhausting all the possible means at his disposal – then that person should just not go there. If some corporate webmaster elects to disable right-clicks, and any random person can still get done whatever it is that needs doing, then no big deal. If the user is unable (and I mean really, absolutely unable) to complete the desired task, and if the problem is really a fundamental one with the website itself and its interface, and if in turn enough people stop visiting the website, and furthermore if the webmaster at Johnson & Johnson is paying any kind of attention to the website statistics, and what impact his changes in the design have on them, then the whole thing will get sorted out organically after a while.

  • http://www.irwebreport.com/ IR Daily

    Matt,

    I wonder how many people use custom stylesheets because I don’t recall seeing them mentioned prominently in accessibility research I’ve read.

    That said, I worked with someone who did use his own stylesheet. He had a really big monitor, too, and liked his text enormous.

    I guess if you need one, you will use a custom stylesheet. Just like if you need larger text, you probably know how to increase the text size in IE. Although, usability results I’ve seen show the people who don’t need larger text don’t know how to increase text sizes. Makes sense, if you don’t need it, why would you know?

    Thing is, because J&J uses absolute rather than relative text sizes, you cannot increase the text in IE 6 or 7 using the increase text size menu option. IE 7 has a zoom function, but that isn’t great and the browser itself isn’t in public release yet.

    That’s why I saw low-sighted users wanting to copy and paste web copy into Word. Because it’s something some are likely to consider doing, especially given they many prefer using Word to to HTML or PDF.

    But the impact isn’t limited to them. Journalists and analysts frequently copy and paste information for reuse. Bloggers do it all the time. I don’t think it’s a good idea to put obstacles in the path of these people because they are influencers. You might also make them suspicious.

    To me, making your site accessible and usable for as broad a cross section of society as possible makes good business sense. I see it as the ability to attract traffic, build loyalty and protect your organization’s reputation.

    There might be some legal liability if you discriminate or create a situation where you make it difficult for people to obtain information they need to prevent an injury or something (Dell’s battery recall for instance), but I like to think of the issue more in terms of the opportunities that good web practices can offer.

    I can’t blame the customer for not being web savvy because the customer is always right online as much as offline. It would be nice if they used shortcuts and understood the technology more, but mostly they’re not going to because they’re not like you or me who obviously spend far too much time online. (BTW, I do think blogs are helping to increase the level of know how. Just having a blog forces people to learn a lot of stuff they didn’t know before.)

    J&J is welcome to do as they wish, as is any other company. My objective in writing this piece is to help others understand the issue so that they make an informed decision if someone suggests they do the same thing.

    I don’t know whose idea this was to turn off right-clicking. It could have been a web or a legal decision. I’m leaning towards a legal decision, judging by the heavy disclaimers all over the site. But I don’t know, so I can’t blame the corporate lawyers again.

    To recap, I think companies should make their sites as broadly accessible and usable as possible. If they’re going to turn off right-clicking, then hopefully they will think it through.

    Finally, not to be outdone by you, my nine-year-old knows how to control-c, control-v, control-x and control-z. But she didn’t learn it at school! :-(

  • matt

    I doubt very many people use custom style sheets. Those who do are probably doing it less as an accessibility aid and more as a measure to eliminate the special kind of pain that only a really poorly laid-out web page can deliver.

    You’re absolutely right that the way that J&J’s pages have been designed means that using the “View” menu option or the CTRL+Scrollwheel option are less than optimal. I think it’s less to do with the way the text size is specified and more to do with wrapping their tables (!) inside divs (!!), and that those divs are set to “POSITION:absolute. This setup is kind of forehead-slappingly stupid. J&J does list instructions, complete with the keyboard shortcuts, to change the text size in IE5(+), but if you set the text size (after setting IE to ignore font sizes specified by the page in Internet Options, General, Accessibility), you still get the text expanding to overfill a box (div) that has been positioned such that it cannot itself expand to accommodate the change. So to make it work you would have to get J&J’s style sheet, fix all of the (unnecessary, I think) absolute positioning rules, strip out the text size property definitions, use this style sheet to override J&J’s styles, and then set your text size how you need it. This is more than even I am willing to do, and I am not ashamed to admit it. It looks like the only recourse in this case is to switch to the text-only version of the site.

    I do agree that J&J – and all other business, for that matter – should adopt a sink-or-swim approach to customer service, and should be willing to bend over backwards to that end, within reasonable limits. Having said that, I also think that people in general should become more proficient with computers (and automobiles, the work that they do, common decency, etc.) The question of how I can be most successful at this task I am about to perform, no matter how insignificant it may seem, is one that it seems to me to go unanswered – if it is ever asked at all – most of the time.

    It’s good that you teach your daughter the “right” way to do things. Some of these nine- and ten-year-old kids will be running what’s left of the planet someday. School is basically alright for what it is, but it’s ultimately up to us parents to make sure that our children turn into useful adults, which I guess is another example of a person taking advantage of a chance to set his variables for maximum goodness.

  • Deb

    The first thing that I saw on the site is the Olympic symbol – do you have any idea how many restrictions are put on the use of that logo? I’m sure that is a driving force from the legal department for the use restrictions on the site.

    As far as use of the site, I agree with many of the points made in these comments. Any company that restricts use on their website is either paranoid or is seriously worried about legal action – it just opens the door to criticism.

    But, has no one noticed the “Text Only” link at the top of the page? If you are just looking for information and cannot read the screen, use of the text-only pages completely solves the problem. Font size can be adjusted easily and the pages are completely searchable.

    If your concern is for ‘non-technical’ users, I think J&J has provided an alternate option – something I haven’t seen on many corporate websites. But, if it’s just so even ‘slightly’ tech-savy users can just grab stuff quicker…maybe you need to rethink your argument.

    And no, I don’t have a connection to J&J. This is just an observation.

  • http://www.irwebreport.com/ IR Daily

    Deb,

    Okay, so why then does the International Olympic Committee not do the same thing on its website? Nonsense.

    Not even blind users like text versions. They see them as an insult and their experience is that they are rarely updated. They want the same thing as everyone else, just made accessible.

    Here’s a quote from a usability study with 16 screen reader users conducted for the NIH:
    “Many screen-reader users do not want a special version (“text version”). Some of the sites that our participants visited offer a “text version” or a “screen reader version.” Only two of the 16 participants said that they liked using text versions. Others argued strongly that two versions are not necessary; one version made accessible is better.”

    Seems we are making excuses for something that simply cannot be justified.

  • It’s fixed!

    Good news: Right Clicking Is Back at JNJ.com !!!