[thelist] Prevent Printing

Ken Schaefer ken at adOpenStatic.com
Tue Mar 23 18:42:52 CST 2004


Actually, what you need to some kind of DRM solution (Digital Rights
Management). Most of these won't work out on the open Internet.

Microsoft does offer something via the Office 2003 System. If you, as the
rights manager, say that people can't print a particular document, then
printing is disabled (including Print-Screen). The problem is that the user
must be using a compatible program to open the document in the first place
(eg Office 2003, Internet Explorer with the necessary DRM addon installed)

This does not prevent "analogue" attacks, eg someone takes their monitor,
and sticks it on a photocopier and photocopies the contents of the screen,
or takes a photo using a digital camera, or copies down the contents of the
document by hand.

Cheers
Ken

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: "Tony Crockford" <tonyc at boldfish.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [thelist] Prevent Printing


: At 17:05 on Tuesday, 23 Mar 2004, Rob Smith wrote:
:
: > Hi,
: >
: > Is there any conceivable way to prevent printing in a web based
: > application?
:
: I doubt it, because there's always the printable screen grab.  A quick
: deterrent might be a print stylesheet with body set to display:none?
:
: (untried)
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