PDFs for document control

Am I going about this the right way?

[mida68]

Hello, I have a PDF and workflow question, not sure of the best forum for this, hopefully "Multimedia" fits the bill ;-)

I have a client selling a document as a product. He would like to prevent the distribution of this document so I am thinking we should:

1) Create it as a PDF
2) Give the customer a secure login/pw link
3) Allow the PDF to be viewed and printed but not saved

This means that the PDF will be viewed in the browser, correct? I've never liked that, it often crashes my own machine but not sure of any other options. Once the document is downloaded, I don't think there is a way to prevent distribution?

Thanks!

[felgall]

Anyone who has access to the link to the PDF can download a copy of it to their PC. From there they can easily distribute it - all that stops them is the copyright notice that appears in the document along with the message that tells the recipient that if they didn't get the file from the proper source that the document has been stolen.

There is no way to create a file on a computer that can't be copied once people have access to it. The best you can hope for is to make it so that they can't modify the content. PDfs do as good a job of this as anything I have seen and better than most.

If you put the PDF into a zip file and link to that then you will ensure that the file is downloaded intstead of being viewed online.

[wickydoodah]

Actually, you may be in luck. The new Adobe Acrobat version 6.0 DOES provide "document controls" along the lines of what you're looking for. According to the Adobe site:

Document Control
Enhance document confidentiality with access controls and permissions, so that only authorized people will be able to view, modify, repurpose, or even print your documents.

Personally, I haven't used this version as I'm still on 5.0, but you might want to look at 6.0 to see if it provides what you need.

[choster]

You can lock the file so users can't extract or insert pages, you can disable the ability to copy content to the clipboard, and you can set a password to open the file. But you can't prevent someone from saving the file to disk, e-mailing it to a friend, and giving the friend the password. That's what it looked like mida68 was looking for.

And there is no shortage of results on a search for "Acrobat password recovery," either.

[Jenstar]

I think you'd find customers would be rather upset to find they are paying money for a product they cannot even save to their hard drive for future reference.

Password protecting will help a bit, but those determined to steal or redistribute will always find a way.