eprints_tech messages

From: "Minh Thu" <minh-thu.nguyen AT polymtl.ca>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:48:53 -0400

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Hello Ben,
Judging by my age, this "old world" thinking sounds appropriate ;-))
Thanks for sharing your thoughts ! I value them.
Minh-Thu


-----Message d'origine-----
De : Ben Wheeler [mailto:b.wheeler AT ulcc.ac.uk] 
Envoyé : 11 03 2009 10:45
À : eprints-tech AT ecs.soton.ac.uk
Objet : [EP-tech] Re: Thesis : Locking PDF files or not ?

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On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 09:47:26AM -0400, Minh Thu wrote:
> I can certainly see that "It prevents legitimate scholarly use (e.g.
> quotation)" because of the copy protection (which can be lifted
> independently), but I would like to understand more about indexing, meta
> analysis, plagiarism detection and digital preservation, could you
elaborate
> them for me ? 

I can chip in on the Digital Preservation point. Preservation requires the
ability to migrate content to new formats as old ones become obsolete. This
can be significantly more difficult if they are password locked or
encrypted.
The long-term preservation requirements for your content may outlast any 
record of the password used to lock it.

The idea that by locking up your content you are "protecting" it, ↵
strikes
me as "old world" thinking. Experience in digital preservation shows ↵
that
the more that content is encumbered with technological, legal or physical
restrictions, the more likely it is to become inaccessible and lost forever 
within 10-20 years.

"New world" thinking is that the best way to ensure that content is 
protected, is to ensure its survival, and that means to keep it free
from encumbrances, so that everyone is free to copy it, quote it, index it, 
migrate it to different formats, and reuse it in ways you never even 
dreamed of. That makes sure that you get lots of copies, not just verbatim
copies of a PDF which will all have exactly the same preservation problems,
but a diverse array of partial or complete copies of the *content* in 
different forms. 

It's a change of paradigm away from the concept of exploiting 
"intellectual property" by locking it away, towards building
reputation and collaboration by allowing a much freer spread of ideas.

Ben