🔦 Feature: Ability to disable download functionality for views, tables, bases about nocodb

[dstala]

@sqkkyzx if one can view & edit data, then they can copy data as well into a spreadsheet manually (though laborious). that was the reason we allowed download functionality by default to all the roles.

having said that, while sharing a view - we do have option to disable download functionality. see if that helps in your case. shared views are not editable though.

[sqkkyzx]

@dstala I completely understand your reasoning. As long as the data is visible, anyone who can see it can copy it in various ways. Besides manual copying, they can save web snapshots, save the HTML directly and process it later, or even write a script to automate data scraping. As long as the data is visible, there will always be ways to copy it, right?

However, in practical daily work, it's not quite like that. Allowing manual copying and allowing downloads do not pose the same level of data breach risk. Blocking downloads is not about preventing professional corporate espionage but about reducing unintentional leaks. For some people, if you don't allow downloads, they won't download the data. But if you enable downloads, they will definitely download the data locally to view it, which greatly increases the risk of data leakage. Moreover, even if someone initially has malicious intent to download the data, the lengthy process of manual copying will significantly increase their psychological burden and also increase the chances of us detecting it.

Viewing permissions and download permissions are not entirely equivalent; their operational costs are not on the same level, and neither are their security risks. I hope you can understand this point.