Prevent Print from PDF Files, Documents, & Web Pages

How to prevent printing of your information and documents such as a PDF file or a web page

At the very first level, if you want to talk about 'prevent printing', then you mean not allowing a document to be printed at all (stop printing or disable printing).  So at the simplest level if you want to prevent printing then you need a document management system that simply does not have the ability to transfer the document to a printer.

However, life is never that simple.  More usually, the requirement to prevent printing means to limit the number of copies that can be printed, or prevent printing to file drivers (that would allow the user to create any number of prints).

So the requirement to prevent printing is usually qualified in some way.  

Sometimes the requirement to prevent printing is actually to prevent printing that cannot be identified.  In other words, whilst printing is to be permitted, per se, there is a desire to prevent printing of the original by others.  This means being able to put information onto the printout that identifies the owner of the IPR of the document, and perhaps the person carrying out the printing.  Whilst this does not act to prevent printing where the authorized user creates the print, it means you prevent printing by other people, by exposing the identity of the person who has failed to implement proper document control and document management.

A common concern that causes people to prevent printing is the risk that printed documents might be scanned and re-published.  The requirement here is not so much prevent printing, but prevent re-printing.  The simplest way to prevent printing in this case is to provide watermarking that will:

• identify clearly the source of the printed information
   
• make it more difficult to try and scan the printout in order to turn it back into text that can then be made into an ordinary document.

One has to be aware that if you do not prevent printing, then you are opening up a potential security weakness by allowing printing, and that you must use one or more of the countermeasures that we have identified in order to reduce the potential for piracy.  If you do not, then you might as well not have bothered with any document security mechanisms.  

But one assumes that you are sensitive to the nuances between needing to prevent printing as an absolute measure, and the need to prevent printing when you mean unidentified printing or printing that can be readily reprocessed whilst removing your proof of ownership of the content.

Download print prevention software to prevent print