Re: Electronic Distribution of Copyrighted User Guides

On 11/19/98, Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, Mike Bradley <mike[_at_]sphinx.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> Try the following under Windows95:
>
> 1. Open a PDF file in the Acrobat reader.
> 2. Click the "Text Selection Tool" icon (it's the one with the
> lowercase "abc" in the dotted-line box).
> 3. Type CTRL-A to Select All, then CTRL-C to copy.
> 4. Change to your favorite word processor (I use Word), select a new
> document, and type CTRL-V to paste.
> 5. Go show the result to your programmer friends and say "are you sure?

It depends. A PDF file can also be an image file from which you cannot select text. See for example the Microsoft trial folder at the DOJ website, where you can get image files of some of the testimony (eg Netscape's Barksdale) in a form which does not permit the selection and copying of text.

John Noble
<jnoble[_at_]dgsys.com> Received on Mon Nov 23 1998 - 14:58:24 GMT