[WEB4LIB] Can printing from a website be limited?

[Dan Lester]

At 04:49 PM 6/14/99 -0700, gbarkovi at sfu.ca wrote:
>We are wondering if, for copyright or other reasons, printing from a 
>website can be technically limited or restricted?

Contents of a web page is in your machine's cache, thus you can only apply 
local control to printing.

>  I presume that whatever can be displayed on somebody's pc can at least 
> be printed by screen capture programs.

You could restrict printing from the browser, by login or keycards, etc.

>  Although I have had patrons ask why certain sites are not printing out. 
> I have presumed that it is often because of the color layout - usually a 
> dark/black background. Whether this is intended to restrict printing or 
> not, I am not sure.

If you print white text on white paper, well.....it is really hard to 
read.  Netscape is troublesome in this way.  Yellow or other light colors 
present the same problem.  But if you use MSIE instead of Netscape, you'll 
get printing of black, regardless of font color.

dan


--
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Dan Lester, 3577 East Pecan, Boise, ID 83716 USA 208-383-0165
dan at 84.com   http://www.84.com/  http://www.postcard.org/