Re: Electronic Distribution of Copyrighted User Guides

On Sat, 14 Nov 1998, JQ Johnson <jqj[_at_]darkwing.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>
> Pamela Finkel aka Esoteric Resources asks about distribution of
> documents in PDF rather than MS Word format as a protection mechanism
> against the creation of unauthorized derivative works. If this were
> in fact an efficient strategy for preventing manipulation of the
> copyrighted material,

I checked with a couple of programmers. They say PDF files are binary files from which text cannot be extracted, so it would seem that PDF is effective in preventing the creation of derivative works by extracting text. But one can always scan and parse the printout from a PDF file, so the protection seems fairly trivial.

How the weakness of the protection relates to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, I dunno. Or the fact that PDF was not developed as a copy protection scheme nor is it generally used as such. It's a cross-platform display scheme.

• Mike Bradley National Writers Union <mike[_at_]sphinx.com>