Electronic document transfer

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Bryan Johnson reports: <<The company I work for is considering providing
electronic copies of our manuals (pdf) to our customers in addition to hard
copies... How secure are pdfs. Can the customer simply perform a "save as"
and set security to "none" and make alterations to the document?>>

The full version of Acrobat lets you provide reasonable security for a PDF
(e.g., you can make the file "print only" or even "read only"), but anyone
who's seriously interested in modifying the files can do so with varying
degrees of effort: the easiest way is to use any of several password
crackers (available free on the Web--I won't say where but a Web search
should turn them up), but a truly desperate user could simply copy and paste
the text or even do a screen capture and run it through OCR software, then
repeat the layout and redistill the PDF file. How likely is this? Not very.
Most people just want to use the docs, not reinvent them. But still, someone
malicious could certainly damage your company's rep if they wanted to spend
enough time and money.

<<What legal liabilities do we have if a corrupted file leads the user into
a dangerous situation?>>

Talk to your lawyer about this one; if you don't have a lawyer and intend to
proceed with this approach, you'd be well advised to hire a lawyer to
address this issue. I'd speculate that you have at least the same
liabilities associated with a printed version of the material, and perhaps
increase your liability greatly if you can't prove that you took reasonable
measures to prevent tampering with the information. PDF is far, far more
secure than HTML, so that's a good start, but it may not be sufficient.

<<Can this be a major loss of revenue if customers simply print out copies
in lieu of ordering new hard copies?>>

Certainly. First off, look at it this way. Every dollar you spend on printed
documentation contributes to the sales price of the product, and it's quite
likely that the book that costs you $3 to print adds $10 to the suggested
retail or wholesale sales price; for each copy you fail to print, that's $7
in potential revenue you've given up. (Your numbers may vary, and probably
do.) Moreover, like many people, I deeply resent being forced to print my
own docs; you can do it cheaper and in a more environmentally responsible
manner than I can, so why aren't you doing it for me? We both win. If I get
sufficiently annoyed, and there's a competing product that ships with full
printed docs, I've got a reasonably strong incentive to switch. I've also
seen the occasional review in influential industry magazines that suggests
you can lose points (and perhaps even the editor's choice award) for
inadequate docs; ask your marketoids what this is going to cost your company
in lost sales.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a
personality, and an obnoxious one at that."-Kim Roper 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Be a published author!  iUniverse gives you: a high-quality paperback, a
custom cover design, and distribution to 25,00 retailers.  Join our almost
10,000 published authors today. http://www.iuniverse.com/media/techwr

  Your monthly sponsorship message here reaches more than
  5000 technical writers, providing 2,500,000+ monthly impressions.
  Contact Eric (ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com) for details and availability.

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.