Re: secured PDFs
At 11:00 AM 3/4/2015, you wrote: We are using the certificate security for our manuals instead, which will make sure that any unauthorized change could be detected. Heiko, from the little I know about PDF certificate security, you must be able to identify every user of the PDF. My clients sell PDF versions of their books via CD on open ecommerce and I have found no good way to secure those PDFs other than the very vulnerable password protection. Do you happen to know if certificate security can be used in situations where a PDF is burned to CD and the CDs mass-produced? My clients require secure PDFs to prevent modifying them and also to prevent companies from copying the content and rebranding it as their own. Carol ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
We avoid PDFs for our subscription publications. We produced a reader that is available as an on-line product or a standalone Windows program (CD, USB Stick, or Download) that provides subscription licenses to be purchased for the publications in the library. We can also control expiration dates, automatic content updates and add our own bells and whistles. It's html based and use's a compressed Lucene index so user's can still copy content page by page but the cleanup and reuse would be a pain. The main feature is user's can't just send or install the program on another PC and have it function like a PDF would. For our print editions we run the source XML into Frame to produce the PDFs for commercial printing. Ed Nodland On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 10:14 AM, Carol J. Elkins celk...@awrittenword.com wrote: At 11:00 AM 3/4/2015, you wrote: We are using the certificate security for our manuals instead, which will make sure that any unauthorized change could be detected. Heiko, from the little I know about PDF certificate security, you must be able to identify every user of the PDF. My clients sell PDF versions of their books via CD on open ecommerce and I have found no good way to secure those PDFs other than the very vulnerable password protection. Do you happen to know if certificate security can be used in situations where a PDF is burned to CD and the CDs mass-produced? My clients require secure PDFs to prevent modifying them and also to prevent companies from copying the content and rebranding it as their own. Carol ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as enodl...@gmail.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/ enodland%40gmail.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
Hi Carol, as I and Shmuel Wolfson pointed out: The password security is not secure at all. I apologize, but your clients require something that cannot be achieved. About the certificate: Given an original PDF with certificate, any later change would be displayed -- so any reader could see that the file is not the original file. On the other hand, of course it is not possible for external users/readers to distinguish a fake PDF with a false certificate or with no certificate at all from an original one. First, he/she would have to know that our company uses a certificate, and second the way a certificate looks like can be reproduced by anyone. Only our staff could find out if the PDF is a fake (with certificate password check), e.g. if necessary to initiate legal measures. At the moment, I do not see any way to prevent fake PDFs, although I would be fond of knowing one. Best regards - Tino H. Haida Carol J. Elkins: At 11:00 AM 3/4/2015, you wrote: We are using the certificate security for our manuals instead, which will make sure that any unauthorized change could be detected. Heiko, from the little I know about PDF certificate security, you must be able to identify every user of the PDF. My clients sell PDF versions of their books via CD on open ecommerce and I have found no good way to secure those PDFs other than the very vulnerable password protection. Do you happen to know if certificate security can be used in situations where a PDF is burned to CD and the CDs mass-produced? My clients require secure PDFs to prevent modifying them and also to prevent companies from copying the content and rebranding it as their own. Carol ___ ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
We password-protect them. We allow almost everything except making changes to the PDF, extracting, printing etc is OK. The reason we do it is to maximise the odds that the user and Support are looking at the same text when they call Support. We have no concerns over the texts being copied etc. -j On 2015-03-03 21:12, Johnson, Joyce wrote: We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce -- Johan Anglemark Tel: 0708-65 10 88 ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
This is what we allow and disallow: Printing: Allowed Changing the Document: Not Allowed Document Assembly: Not Allowed Content Copying or Extraction: Allowed Content Extraction for Accessibility: Allowed Commenting: Not Allowed Filling of form fields: Not Allowed Signing: Not Allowed Creation of Template Pages: Not Allowed -- Shmuel Wolfson Technical Writer On 03-Mar-15 10:12 PM, Johnson, Joyce wrote: We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.com CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission shall not constitute the waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as shmue...@gmail.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/shmuelw1%40gmail.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
Hi all, some time ago I bought the PDF Password Remover (-- http://www.verypdf.com/app/pdf-password-remover/index.html)for legal purposes. The tool simply wipes away the password in a second and costs only 30 $. So, forget about password security to be any kind of obstacle. We are using the certificate security for our manuals instead, which will make sure that any unauthorized change could be detected. (Until now, I still do believe that a certificate can not be removed, or only by those users who own the certificate and with the system where the certificate was originally set. But maybe this is not true, does anyone have objections?) Best regards - Tino H. Haida, Berlin Shmuel: This is what we allow and disallow: Printing: ALLOWED Changing the Document: Not Allowed Document Assembly: Not Allowed Content Copying or Extraction: ALLOWED Content Extraction for Accessibility: ALLOWED Commenting: Not Allowed Filling of form fields: Not Allowed Signing: Not Allowed Creation of Template Pages: Not Allowed -- Shmuel Wolfson Technical Writer On 03-Mar-15 10:12 PM, Johnson, Joyce wrote: We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I'm wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce JOYCE M. JOHNSON AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.com [1] Links: -- [1] http://www.abtg.com/ ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
Actually there is a free one called Freeware PDF Unlocker that works most of the time and A-PDF Restrictions Remover which is even better for only $10. -- Shmuel Wolfson Technical Writer On 04-Mar-15 3:31 PM, Heiko Haida wrote: Hi all, some time ago I bought the PDF Password Remover (-- http://www.verypdf.com/app/pdf-password-remover/index.html)for legal purposes. The tool simply wipes away the password in a second and costs only 30 $. So, forget about password security to be any kind of obstacle. We are using the certificate security for our manuals instead, which will make sure that any unauthorized change could be detected. (Until now, I still do believe that a certificate can not be removed, or only by those users who own the certificate and with the system where the certificate was originally set. But maybe this is not true, does anyone have objections?) Best regards - Tino H. Haida, Berlin Shmuel: This is what we allow and disallow: Printing: Allowed Changing the Document: Not Allowed Document Assembly: Not Allowed Content Copying or Extraction: Allowed Content Extraction for Accessibility: Allowed Commenting: Not Allowed Filling of form fields: Not Allowed Signing: Not Allowed Creation of Template Pages: Not Allowed -- Shmuel Wolfson Technical Writer On 03-Mar-15 10:12 PM, Johnson, Joyce wrote: We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I'm wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.com ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
In addition to hard-copies of our manuals included in the operator cab of the heavy construction equipment my company manufactures and markets worldwide, we also make available pdf files of our manuals with passwords to prevent changes, copying text images, etc. So far, we're not aware of any plagiarism or other unauthorized use of our stuff. At least not yet. -- Ken in Atlanta On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 3:33 PM, tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com wrote: We used to deliver user guides as secured PDFs; however, the security settings in Acrobat 9 never fully suited our needs. We have since upgraded to Acrobat 12, but I haven't checked if the settings are any better. That said, securing the documents ended up being more pain than it was worth. Too many users wanted to extract pages or do other things that we deemed were OK. We dropped the securing documents years ago. I know there is fear that someone could steal some trade secret (I never found one in our manuals), but as long as you are distributing a document in either PDF or print, you have to assume that sooner or later your competition will manage to get a copy. As far as protecting ourselves from someone modifying our documentation in a way that could expose us to liability for machine damage or personal injury, we cover ourselves (per the lawyers) by including disclaimers in the preface and noting that the documentation always remains our proprietary property and cannot be altered or duplicated without our permission. I'm sure that doesn't stop anyone, but the legal folks say that if a customer violates that clause, they place themselves at risk through no fault of ours. Tom Beiswenger Manager, Technical Training Documentation, Project Manager - Inspection Business Emhart Glass Mfg. Inc. 1140 Sullivan St. Elmira, NY 14901 PH: +607 735-4279 FX: +607 734-8278 Mobile: +607 769-4779 Email: tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com From: Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.com To: framers@lists.frameusers.com framers@lists.frameusers.com Date: 03/03/2015 03:14 PM Subject: secured PDFs Sent by: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.com CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission shall not constitute the waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/tom.beiswenger%40emhartglass.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/for more resources and info. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as poshe...@bellsouth.net. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/poshedly%40bellsouth.net Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
It's more a matter of our verbage and/or images being copied and used in the documentation by competitors. As a tech writer for two world-known heavy equipment companies over the past 17 years, I know first-hand that it is not uncommon for former technicians and trainers to be put in front of a keyboard and terminal to produce manuals when they get too old to travel long distances or for extended periods for training or service duties. Their skills are valued far more than their ability to write coherent text. They obviously know every thread-pitch, ampere and torque of all bolts and everything else, but proper writing skills and observance of copyright laws are TOTALLY foreign to many of them. That is exactly what happened when I worked alongside a former friend who had been a trainer for many years but then got into technical writing. Cutting and pasting stuff verbatim from competitors' manuals was totally what he did. When I told him our company could theoretically get sued out of existence, he brushed it off. In the real world, I don't know if that kind of stuff (being sued for using plagiarized text and graphics in construction equipment manuals) actually matters, but my job -- the way I see it -- includes protecting my employer from this kind of stuff. On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 4:00 PM, john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com wrote: Ken...just wondering... If a customer buys your product, what do you care if they make changes? John X Posada AML Syst Ops Supt Data Analyst | US FCC RC Systems Control Analytics | HSBC North America Holdings Inc 330 Madison Ave., NY NY ___ Phone Int: 212-525-5483 Ext: Personal Cellphone - 732-259-2874 Fax Conference Bridge - 877-304-0052, Code 74809254 Email john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com ___ Protect our environment - please only print this if you have to! From:Ken Poshedly poshe...@bellsouth.net To:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com, Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.com Cc:framers@lists.frameusers.com framers@lists.frameusers.com Date:03/03/2015 03:56 PM Subject:Re: secured PDFs Sent by:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com In addition to hard-copies of our manuals included in the operator cab of the heavy construction equipment my company manufactures and markets worldwide, we also make available pdf files of our manuals with passwords to prevent changes, copying text images, etc. So far, we're not aware of any plagiarism or other unauthorized use of our stuff. At least not yet. -- Ken in Atlanta On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 3:33 PM, tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com wrote: We used to deliver user guides as secured PDFs; however, the security settings in Acrobat 9 never fully suited our needs. We have since upgraded to Acrobat 12, but I haven't checked if the settings are any better. That said, securing the documents ended up being more pain than it was worth. Too many users wanted to extract pages or do other things that we deemed were OK. We dropped the securing documents years ago. I know there is fear that someone could steal some trade secret (I never found one in our manuals), but as long as you are distributing a document in either PDF or print, you have to assume that sooner or later your competition will manage to get a copy. As far as protecting ourselves from someone modifying our documentation in a way that could expose us to liability for machine damage or personal injury, we cover ourselves (per the lawyers) by including disclaimers in the preface and noting that the documentation always remains our proprietary property and cannot be altered or duplicated without our permission. I'm sure that doesn't stop anyone, but the legal folks say that if a customer violates that clause, they place themselves at risk through no fault of ours. Tom Beiswenger Manager, Technical Training Documentation, Project Manager - Inspection Business Emhart Glass Mfg. Inc. 1140 Sullivan St. Elmira
RE: secured PDFs
Yikes! Copyright and trademark, etc., is important – I have done internal presentations here to make sure that we are all careful about that. While it is rare for any manual information to be the basis of serious copyright legal cases, the consequences of such infringement could be harsh and fiscally troublesome. The Legal Counsel inside a company (of any size) should be involved in any situation where these can arise. If your former friend had ever mentioned his approach to them, I am sure he would have been given way more than a sharp rap on his knuckles by competent legal counsel! And, of course, if you are finding your verbiage and images are being used by competitors, the legal folks can (and should) send a cease-and-desist to start. Often, this is enough to solve the problem (i.e., “don’t file a lawsuit that costs money if you can cure it easily” mode of operation) – it is rare to see the Apple-Samsung type of cases, actually. Z From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Ken Poshedly Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2015 1:17 PM To: john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com Cc: framers@lists.frameusers.com; Johnson, Joyce Subject: Re: secured PDFs It's more a matter of our verbage and/or images being copied and used in the documentation by competitors. As a tech writer for two world-known heavy equipment companies over the past 17 years, I know first-hand that it is not uncommon for former technicians and trainers to be put in front of a keyboard and terminal to produce manuals when they get too old to travel long distances or for extended periods for training or service duties. Their skills are valued far more than their ability to write coherent text. They obviously know every thread-pitch, ampere and torque of all bolts and everything else, but proper writing skills and observance of copyright laws are TOTALLY foreign to many of them. That is exactly what happened when I worked alongside a former friend who had been a trainer for many years but then got into technical writing. Cutting and pasting stuff verbatim from competitors' manuals was totally what he did. When I told him our company could theoretically get sued out of existence, he brushed it off. In the real world, I don't know if that kind of stuff (being sued for using plagiarized text and graphics in construction equipment manuals) actually matters, but my job -- the way I see it -- includes protecting my employer from this kind of stuff. On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 4:00 PM, john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.commailto:john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.commailto:john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com wrote: Ken...just wondering... If a customer buys your product, what do you care if they make changes? John X Posada AML Syst Ops Supt Data Analyst | US FCC RC Systems Control Analytics | HSBC North America Holdings Inc 330 Madison Ave., NY NY ___ Phone Int: 212-525-5483 Ext: Personal Cellphone - 732-259-2874 Fax Conference Bridge - 877-304-0052, Code 74809254 Email john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.commailto:john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com ___ Protect our environment - please only print this if you have to! From:Ken Poshedly poshe...@bellsouth.netmailto:poshe...@bellsouth.net To:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.commailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.commailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com, Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.commailto:jjohn...@abtg.com Cc:framers@lists.frameusers.commailto:framers@lists.frameusers.com framers@lists.frameusers.commailto:framers@lists.frameusers.com Date:03/03/2015 03:56 PM Subject:Re: secured PDFs Sent by: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.commailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com In addition to hard-copies of our manuals included in the operator cab of the heavy construction equipment my company manufactures and markets worldwide, we also make available pdf files of our manuals with passwords to prevent changes, copying text images, etc. So far, we're not aware of any plagiarism or other unauthorized use of our stuff. At least not yet. -- Ken in Atlanta On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 3:33 PM, tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.commailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.commailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com wrote: We used to deliver user guides as secured PDFs; however, the security settings in Acrobat 9 never fully suited our needs. We have since upgraded to Acrobat 12, but I haven't checked if the settings are any better. That said, securing the documents ended up being more pain than it was worth. Too many users wanted to extract pages or do other things that we deemed were OK. We dropped the securing documents years ago. I know there is fear that someone could steal some trade secret (I never found one in our
secured PDFs
We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I'm wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.comhttp://www.abtg.com/ CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission shall not constitute the waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
RE: secured PDFs
We secure our customer-facing PDFs. Users can Print or View only. We've learned the hard way with dealers/distributors who pull things out, make shorter/different versions or change things to suit their personal style. I know it's easy to crack a PDF password, but from a liability standpoint, if someone does this, it's a deliberate act on their part. As we produce Medical Devices, it is imperative that no one tampers with content which has had to go through software reviews, clinical reviews, Risk Assessments, Regulatory approvals (FDA, Health Canada, etc) audits (again, FDA, Health Canada, etc). A few internal people occasionally ask for extracts from the manuals for legitimate purposes, so I extract the specifics they need - but I never give them the password (too many in-house people keep copies and pass them around, so we've learned the hard way that only documentation personal can have the password). Alison Alison Craig | Technical Documentation Lead Ultrasonix | 130-4311 Viking Way | Richmond, BC V6V 2K9 | analogicultrasound.comhttp://www.analogicultrasound.com T 604-279-8550 ext 127 | F 604-279-8559 From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Johnson, Joyce Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2015 12:12 PM To: framers@lists.frameusers.com Subject: secured PDFs We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I'm wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.comhttp://www.abtg.com/ CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission shall not constitute the waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
I deliver documentation via PDFs downloaded from our Shrepoint servers. We don't password them. The SP site is accessible only by permission. We don't secure them. We know what we sent. If someone makes changes that are wrong, we can show what they originally received. The wrong is on their head. John X Posada AML Syst Ops Supt Data Analyst | US FCC RC Systems Control Analytics | HSBC North America Holdings Inc 330 Madison Ave., NY NY ___ Phone Int: 212-525-5483 Ext: Personal Cellphone - 732-259-2874 Fax Conference Bridge - 877-304-0052, Code 74809254 Email john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com ___ Protect our environment - please only print this if you have to! From: Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.com To: framers@lists.frameusers.com framers@lists.frameusers.com Date: 03/03/2015 03:14 PM Subject:secured PDFs Sent by:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.com CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission shall not constitute the waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege. ** This message originated from the Internet. Its originator may or may not be who they claim to be and the information contained in the message and any attachments may or may not be accurate. ** ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/john.x.posada%40us.hsbc.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. ** This message originated from the Internet. Its originator may or may not be who they claim to be and the information contained in the message and any attachments may or may not be accurate. ** - ** This E-mail is confidential. It may also be legally privileged. If you are not the addressee you may not copy, forward, disclose or use any part of it. If you have received this message in error, please delete it and all copies from your system and notify the sender immediately by return E-mail. Internet communications cannot be guaranteed to be timely, secure, error or virus-free. The sender does not accept liability for any errors or omissions. ** SAVE PAPER - THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT! ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman
Re: secured PDFs
Ken...just wondering... If a customer buys your product, what do you care if they make changes? John X Posada AML Syst Ops Supt Data Analyst | US FCC RC Systems Control Analytics | HSBC North America Holdings Inc 330 Madison Ave., NY NY ___ Phone Int: 212-525-5483 Ext: Personal Cellphone - 732-259-2874 Fax Conference Bridge - 877-304-0052, Code 74809254 Email john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com ___ Protect our environment - please only print this if you have to! From: Ken Poshedly poshe...@bellsouth.net To: tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com, Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.com Cc: framers@lists.frameusers.com framers@lists.frameusers.com Date: 03/03/2015 03:56 PM Subject:Re: secured PDFs Sent by:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com In addition to hard-copies of our manuals included in the operator cab of the heavy construction equipment my company manufactures and markets worldwide, we also make available pdf files of our manuals with passwords to prevent changes, copying text images, etc. So far, we're not aware of any plagiarism or other unauthorized use of our stuff. At least not yet. -- Ken in Atlanta On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 3:33 PM, tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com wrote: We used to deliver user guides as secured PDFs; however, the security settings in Acrobat 9 never fully suited our needs. We have since upgraded to Acrobat 12, but I haven't checked if the settings are any better. That said, securing the documents ended up being more pain than it was worth. Too many users wanted to extract pages or do other things that we deemed were OK. We dropped the securing documents years ago. I know there is fear that someone could steal some trade secret (I never found one in our manuals), but as long as you are distributing a document in either PDF or print, you have to assume that sooner or later your competition will manage to get a copy. As far as protecting ourselves from someone modifying our documentation in a way that could expose us to liability for machine damage or personal injury, we cover ourselves (per the lawyers) by including disclaimers in the preface and noting that the documentation always remains our proprietary property and cannot be altered or duplicated without our permission. I'm sure that doesn't stop anyone, but the legal folks say that if a customer violates that clause, they place themselves at risk through no fault of ours. Tom Beiswenger Manager, Technical Training Documentation, Project Manager - Inspection Business Emhart Glass Mfg. Inc. 1140 Sullivan St. Elmira, NY 14901 PH: +607 735-4279 FX: +607 734-8278 Mobile: +607 769-4779 Email: tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com From:Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.com To:framers@lists.frameusers.com framers@lists.frameusers.com Date:03/03/2015 03:14 PM Subject:secured PDFs Sent by:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.com CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission
RE: secured PDFs
We never bother to secure our PDF's. Even though much of the information we have available for our customers is often proprietary to us, worrying about people extracting a page here and there, or printing what they shouldn't, etc., seemed to be overkill. Basically, we protect our confidential relationships with NDA's and deal with each release of confidential information if it occurs - too rare to matter, btw. All documents that fall under the NDA terms are always clearly marked with the words Aeris Confidential Information in the footnote on every page too. That is a requirement of our NDA, and our legal folks re-iterate that to people often. :) Z From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Johnson, Joyce Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2015 12:12 PM To: framers@lists.frameusers.com Subject: secured PDFs We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I'm wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.comhttp://www.abtg.com/ CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission shall not constitute the waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
Re: secured PDFs
We deliver unlocked PDFs. The only time I use locked PDFs is at the customer's request. As for illegal reuse; we have seen lawsuits successfully brought by Cisco and Brocade (successful in that the defendant agreed to rework their docs). Grant On March 3, 2015 at 2:17 PM Ken Poshedly poshe...@bellsouth.net wrote: It's more a matter of our verbage and/or images being copied and used in the documentation by competitors. As a tech writer for two world-known heavy equipment companies over the past 17 years, I know first-hand that it is not uncommon for former technicians and trainers to be put in front of a keyboard and terminal to produce manuals when they get too old to travel long distances or for extended periods for training or service duties. Their skills are valued far more than their ability to write coherent text. They obviously know every thread-pitch, ampere and torque of all bolts and everything else, but proper writing skills and observance of copyright laws are TOTALLY foreign to many of them. That is exactly what happened when I worked alongside a former friend who had been a trainer for many years but then got into technical writing. Cutting and pasting stuff verbatim from competitors' manuals was totally what he did. When I told him our company could theoretically get sued out of existence, he brushed it off. In the real world, I don't know if that kind of stuff (being sued for using plagiarized text and graphics in construction equipment manuals) actually matters, but my job -- the way I see it -- includes protecting my employer from this kind of stuff. On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 4:00 PM, john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com wrote: Ken...just wondering... If a customer buys your product, what do you care if they make changes? John X Posada AML Syst Ops Supt Data Analyst | US FCC RC Systems Control Analytics | HSBC North America Holdings Inc 330 Madison Ave., NY NY ___ Phone Int: 212-525-5483 Ext: Personal Cellphone - 732-259-2874 Fax Conference Bridge - 877-304-0052, Code 74809254 Email john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com mailto:john.x.pos...@us.hsbc.com ___ Protect our environment - please only print this if you have to! From:Ken Poshedly poshe...@bellsouth.net mailto:poshe...@bellsouth.net To: tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com mailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com mailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com , Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.com mailto:jjohn...@abtg.com Cc: framers@lists.frameusers.com mailto:framers@lists.frameusers.com framers@lists.frameusers.com mailto:framers@lists.frameusers.com Date:03/03/2015 03:56 PM Subject:Re: secured PDFs Sent by:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com In addition to hard-copies of our manuals included in the operator cab of the heavy construction equipment my company manufactures and markets worldwide, we also make available pdf files of our manuals with passwords to prevent changes, copying text images, etc. So far, we're not aware of any plagiarism or other unauthorized use of our stuff. At least not yet. -- Ken in Atlanta On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 3:33 PM, tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com mailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com mailto:tom.beiswen...@emhartglass.com wrote: We used to deliver user guides as secured PDFs; however, the security settings in Acrobat 9 never fully suited our needs. We have since upgraded to Acrobat 12, but I haven't checked if the settings are any better. That said, securing the documents ended up being more pain than it was worth. Too many users wanted to extract pages or do other things that we deemed
Re: secured PDFs
In the financial industry we are under requirements from the CFPB to provide authorized documents to our internal users. One part of that is access to secured online docs. We want the authorized version to be used and that is only possible from a single online access point, ensuring that the latest authorized version is used. We don't want them to extract anything, or to print. On Mar 3, 2015, at 14:12, Johnson, Joyce jjohn...@abtg.com wrote: We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers via password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our customer web portal. I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents. Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they can extract pages and images? Thanks in advance for your responses. Joyce Joyce M. Johnson AmerisourceBergen Lead Technical Writer Technology Group 1400 Busch Parkway Buffalo Grove, IL 60089 847.808.5875 888.537.3102 ext 15875 www.abtg.com CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information and is intended only for the review of the party to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately return it to the sender, delete it and destroy it without reading it. Unintended transmission shall not constitute the waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as qui...@airmail.net. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/quills%40airmail.net Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. ___ You are currently subscribed to framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
