At the AALL exhibit hall, I picked up at some information about CISTI's document delivery service and their new Secure Desktop Delivery. In order to receive your orders electronically, you register with CISTI, download the SDD plugin, and you're good to go; they can then send your documents to you electronically as PDF files. But these aren't just any PDF files. Due to copyright concerns, CISTI delivers secure PDFs which limit the number of times you can print and view the document. It's fairly draconian...you're allowed to view and/or print the document once and only once.
Since Adobe Acrobat doesn't offer this kind of security, I wondered how this was done. So I dug around a bit, and found the solution that I believe they're using for their SDD, FileOpen Web Publisher. While I'm not suggesting that you use this kind of program in your firm to keep your attorneys in check in regards to copyright, it's an interesting product that could have a variety of uses.
Of course, limited viewing and printing of such files doesn't stop you from taking the one print-out you're allowed to your photocopier and making ten copies, or scanning the document to a plain-vanilla PDF file. But then, there's only so much they, or anybody, can do to limit distribution of copyrighted materials. It certainly is a good effort!
Users of systems that permit plug-ins need to bew aware that some plug-ins allow you copy text from a PDF file whether it is protected or not - you don't have to even bother printing the document. This is not rocket science we are talking about here.