So I noticed today that you can't save pictures from IMDb. All you get is a 1x1 gif file. So of course I had to figure out how they did that. The rest of this entry will probably bore the pants off of you but there's a photo at the end to make up for it.

The system is pretty simple, they make a table and use the real image as the background. Then they take a 1x1 transparent gif file, stretch it to the size of the photo and fill the table with that. They didn't need to add the transparent gif file but it's a nice, evil touch.

Of course they could've done this a lot more efficiently with css. Stupid tables.

But why are they doing it at all? What's wrong with people saving these pictures? I can understand blocking remote linking because of the bandwidth costs but to mess with the ability to save pictures? It's not like they own copyright on any of them.

And it's really not that an effective system to begin with. Just look at the source code, search for "http://i.imdb.com/mptv1.gif" (the name of the transparent gif) and you can find the real url a little to the left. Copy paste it into your address bar and there you go. So it's only going to stop casual people who just want to save a couple of images for their own use or their fan page or something like that.

Ten points from house IMDb.