eprints_tech messages

http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/eprints-tech
*** EPrints community wiki - http://wiki.eprints.org/
All very good reasons for not locking pdf files... Tim, do you mind if I
copy your summary to the jiscmail UKCORR-discussion list? I think it
would be good to share this with other repository managers, and also for
us to discuss how we handle concerns about plagiarism of the works made
available through repositories.

Kind regards

Jen

Jenny Delasalle
E-Repositories Manager
Research & Innovation Unit
University of Warwick Library
Gibbet Hill Road
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
Tel: (+44) (0) 24 765 75793
http://go.warwick.ac.uk/repositories

> -----Original Message-----
> From: eprints-tech-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk 
> [mailto:eprints-tech-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Tim Brody
> Sent: 11 March 2009 11:02
> To: eprints-tech AT ecs.soton.ac.uk
> Subject: [EP-tech] Re: Thesis : Locking PDF files or not ?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 