Google docs can “lock” a page so that it’s impossible to copy from its text. This seems wrong to me; shouldn't a computer’s ability to copy and paste be intrinsic? I can’t understand how a webpage can “overstep” its authority and prevent my computer from doing something totally natural. It seems that if I can be served and display text that I should be able to copy it.
How does this webpage prevent my machine from copying?
As of the 10th of May, 2018, disabling JavaScript will not load the document at all, and changing the 'edit' to 'preview' also no longer works.
I have found that if you click on the three dots and go to:
More Tools > Developer Tools and then click on console, and type in document.body.innerText, it loads the entire document as a text file, so that you can copy to your heart's content.
APRIL 2025 EDIT:
Just use Fireshot Chrome extension & take Full Page screenshot. Save it as a PDF & then go use https://github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF (this final step of getting OCR didn't work for me... Example Restricted Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u4qPhwmOeSyUN4dBzyvBUrqjkzdOfawJZ2SuPI5Exhg/edit?tab=t.0)