cutting and copying and pasting in emacs.

[Mirabella, Mathew J]

Hi all.
I ran into a slight difficulty.  In emacs, i realise you can do C-w and C-SPC 
to cut tetxt from a buffer which can then be yanked into a buffer with C-Y.  
However, if you are reviewing a buffer that is read only, you cannot grab the 
text out in this way.  So is there a command in emacs which allows you to copy 
a block rather than cut it.
Thanks.
Mat.