Re[2]: More comments on updated timed-text document

At 16:20 +0100 3/19/02, Chris Lilley wrote:
>On Monday, 18 March, 2002, 20:01:40, Erik wrote:
>
>EH> At 12:26 03/18/2002 -0500, geoff freed wrote:
>>>  >Its not clear to me what III.10 would mean in practice.
>>>  >
>>>
>>>Erik Hodge originally proposed this.  I think he means that authors should
>>>be able to keep users from downloading the text stream, similar to how
>>>users can be prevented from downloading .RM files.  How this can be
>>>accomplished, I don't know.  Erik?
>
>EH> Some authors want to protect their content from being copied.  We
>EH> should consider adding a feature that prevents a viewer from easily
>EH> copying TT text from presentations.  You can't use the mouse or
>EH> keyboard to select and copy RealText presentations, currently, but you
>EH> can use the "view source" feature of the RealPlayer to view/select/copy
>EH> all or part of the .rt file if the server is set to provide that.
>
>EH> With TT, we may want to enable the author to describe in the TT file
>EH> whether or not the user agent should allow selection+copying of the
>EH> presented text at any point in the presentation.
>
>
>Ah, ok, the 'pulling the wool over the eyes' school of copy
>protection. It suffices for impressing clients, but offers no actual
>security at all in practice.

I think there is a world of difference between enforced and notified 
restrictions.  I regularly get Acrobat documents with text copying 
disabled, and that is usually sufficient to stop me even though it's 
not hard to bypass.

>There were calls for that sort of thing in SVG, but we declined
>because it gives the appearance of solving a problem without actually
>doing anything.

I think the mechanism has value as long as the author understands 
what it does and does not do.

>
>In addition, it compromises accessibility to not be able to select text.

That, I agree, is the royal pain about copy-menu-protected documents.


-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime