To say nothing about the fact that once you're actually viewing the comic, it's going to be pretty easy to find a way of saving it anyway...

Well, if they're using the same format as they did back when they introduced DotComics and were putting the Ultimate titles online (we're talking, ooh, 2001-ish here - oh, happy days), then you in fact view the comics in a weird flash-based system where the pages turn and you have to click on individual panels to view them. So it would be quite difficult to get hold of all the panels and then put them together in a readable format (not like comics you download via torrent sites etc., which are basically big scans in JPG format dumped in a ZIP file that's then renamed for browsing in CDisplay)...

Well, you could just save the Flash file.

Again, to be fair, they're more complicated that that. Even back in the very early days of flash, when they first introduced the DotComics, you couldn't simply save the file because they don't work when run locally. I mean, technically you could printscreen each panel as you read it and reassemble the comic that way, but by that point it's easier just to actually go out and pirate them. I don't think Marvel are at all concerned that they're fuelling or contributing to any potential piracy with this move.

On that note, we never did do a piece on this, did we?

> Saving != Downloading. Come on BBC, sort it out.

Is this definitely always the case? Some flash videos, for example, do not save to cache; they're stored just as a very small file which I think must be just a shortcut. Indeed I thought many websites utilised flash specifically to prevent you from saving content.