Thread: Control how your Documents

In much the same way that artists and musicians protect their work with copyright and performance restrictions, you can exercise control over how your documents are used and whether they can be dis¬tributed or edited.

You may not be unduly fussed about someone reproducing the notes you handed' out to accompany a presentation, but you'd be fairly annoyed if they started sending out copies of an indepth report you'd spent months researching.

Knowledge is valuable and, if nothing else, you should expect credit as the author. But listing yourself as the author does little to stop others from incorporating the content into their own work and passing it off as their own. And plagiarism isn't confined to lazy students.



Most scenarios where you'll be keen to protect your work will involve something fancier than a word-processed document, but it doesn't hurt to get into the habit of adding authorial information to the Properties, or setting files as read-only and accessible only to those who have the necessary password. PDFs partially solve the problem by presenting a readable document as an image with limited editing abilities. However, you still need to be able to apply some protection.

Multimedia files that you create should bear some form of acknowledgement of your craftsmanship. Professional artists deem it important enough to wrap their work in a layer of protective swaddling known as DRM (digital rights management). And so can you. With Web 2.0 sites encouraging us to post our thoughts, scrawls and photos online, the following tips for proactively protecting your property will prove invaluable.