Re: Electronic Distribution of Copyrighted User Guides

On 18/November/1998, Mike Bradley <mike[_at_]sphinx.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

I wouldn't call it any serious level of technological protection -- but I believe you at least need to download the file and open it to get the text out in this manner. If so, it puts copying on a nuisance level par with, say, photocopying each of the pages of a book.

-- 
Carol Ruth Shepherd
Arborlaw Associates PLLC
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
+1 734 668 4646 tel   +1 734 663 9361 fax
business, technology, entertainment and new media law
shepherd[_at_]arborlaw.com