eprints_tech messages

From: Tim Brody <tdb2 AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:02:23 +0000

http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/eprints-tech
*** EPrints community wiki - http://wiki.eprints.org/
On Tue, 2009-03-10 at 15:55 -0400, Minh Thu wrote:
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/eprints-tech
> *** EPrints community wiki - http://wiki.eprints.org/
> Hi all,
> 
> We are in a situation where department staff deposit all theses, not
> students. We do ask students not to password lock their files, however we
> are going to ask staff to lock these files (by the same password).
> 
> What are your thoughts as to whether we should lock PDF documents or not ↵
to
> prevent modifications & copy ?

I would argue against adding security settings to PDFs for the following
reasons:
 - It doesn't protect you against determined abuse i.e. any
password-protected file can be cracked with the appropriate tools
 - It will prevent the PDF being indexed by EPrints and other search
engines
 - It prevents legitimate scholarly use (e.g. quotation)
 - It prevents meta-analysis
 - It hinders plagiarism detection
 - It hinders digital preservation

(+ all the other potential interesting uses that no one has thought of
yet)

All the best,
Tim.