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user-experienceright-click

Why you shouldn't block right click on website


I'm building a website for semi-government organization.

They want me to block right click, I don't want to do that, because it's obviously BS.

Their main reasoning is "We don't want people to download our images." Some of those images are copyrighted / have restrictive licenses.

I already told them, that there are other ways to download images from web, which are impossible to block, it didn't help.

Can you give any other reasons why you shouldn't block right click on websites?

I'd like to try to persuade them one last time, preferably with a big list of reasons why it's a bad idea.

Your contributions to this list are very appreciated.


Solution

    • It blocks accessibility features in most browsers. This is a huge legal issue for anyone who gets public money (state, city, education, etc).

    • You lose swipe gestures which are becoming very popular

    • Difficult to reliably do it across every browser & device (extra cost for build & maintenance)

    • Google image search has a lot more copyright content than you do and they don't block the right click menu.

    Here's Sitepoint's take on the issue and a few alternatives