PDF rights management & DRM controls
So, a great many of what we consider to be DRM controls may be seen as PDF digital rights management simply because they’re what Adobe decided to provide when it developed its portable document format. These may not reflect the same type of document rights that groups like XrML envisage, but they have managed to stick, which is more than can be said for the rest.
Software should contain the following controls for it to be effective at controlling document access and use.
Core controls
The core document security functions in PDF digital rights management are printing, copying/extraction and changing with save. This is because it doesn’t matter what kind of publisher you are and what you are trying to achieve, you are going to need these functions whilst the work remains in copyright. However, additional functions may be required depending on the situation.
Watermarks
Watermarking is another common protection, but it’s a bit of an open question. Many publishers want their customers to be able to make printed copies, but they also recognize that converting a good printed copy of a book into a PDF is trivial. Watermarking helps with this, but a heavy watermark on a document detracts from the visual quality of the result and a light watermark can be removed by adjusting scanning contrast. The same goes for attempts to watermark pictures.
Some systems even try to put watermarks in that ‘identify’ the purchaser, to help prevent purchased copies from wandering. This is often called “Social DRM”. The jury remains out as to the actual value of watermarks in DRM, but they seem here to stay in the video and broadcast businesses, at least. However, combined with other controls to stop copying they can be made effective.
Collaboration controls
The controls surrounding assembly, filling in forms, comment authoring, signing, and templates are specific to features that Adobe included in its products for collaboration purposes. Most of these are not likely to find their way into commercial publishing initiatives, although they may be appropriate in the e-learning or distance education markets.
Accessibility controls
Controls over document accessibility may well be one of the most vexed of the Adobe proposed PDF Rights Management controls. Some cite Adobe’s 2000 release of the public domain Alice in Wonderland with DRM controls asserting that “this book cannot be read aloud”, as a perfect example of DRM overreach. It disabled text-to-speech functionality entirely, impacting the dyslexic and visually impaired communities.
Certainly, if a person with poor sight purchases a document that can be ‘spoken’ from the text physically, is it right to prevent them from being able to use the document in that way digitally? I don’t know any safe way to turn the famous Tenniel illustrations into words, but that would not stop plenty of Jabberwockies from having a damn good try. Given the shift of many governments, led by the European Union and Canada, into providing accessibility, artificial restrictions on it may prove politically unsound.
So, there you have it. PDF digital rights management controls represent a well-thought-out series of controls. We can argue about whether they are complete, appropriate, or suitable. But they represent a significant stake in the ground about the controls that should be applied. In analysis, you can break PDF controls down into three groups:
- those for pure publishers
- extensions for additional control
- those for document collaboration
Sometimes these distinctions may blur, but they have stood the test of time as being useful.
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