[WEB4LIB] Re: Can printing from a website be limited?

[sean dreilinger]

Dan Lester wrote:
> 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?

i once compared notes on this with an information administrator for a
pharmaceutical company -- they were very interested in preventing *any*
outdated drug development information from being printed or circulated
outside of the centralised, official distribution point. major FDA grief
potential there.

you can look at effective (but not foolproof) solutions that include
PDFs with printing disabled, network install of the intranet browser
with printing disabled, and options that may be included in CSS2 (any
media specific options, e.g. show it all on screen but just print a
caution when displayed to a printer?), xml and java-based docs.

iirc the drug company opted to trust their staff -- a policy and
employee education about why printing from the intranet was a no-no.
that may or may not be an option in your situation...

hth

--
mailto:sean at savvysearch.com                sean dreilinger, mlis
 http://www.savvysearch.com                http://durak.org/sean