RE: PDF hilarity (was: Should a PDF include "Printed in Country" phrase ?)

["Sean Brierley" <sbri -at- haestad -dot- com>]

Well, I see things like this.

Once I worked for a company that had no dress code. People wore jeans,
Dockers, skirts, pant suits, shorts, whatever.

Then, a dress code was implemented--one that I was meeting already. It
said things like no miniskirts, without defining what a mini skirt was.
After a few weeks I noticed no changes, so I asked what caused this new
policy and was told that one or two employees had been dressing
inappropriately. So I asked why their managers did not discuss the issue
with their employees, and was told the managers were uncomfortable doing
so. And, so I suggested that maybe we needed managers who would stand up
and be counted (I was more polite than that). Then I asked about why
nobody was following the dress code and was told that it was there for
those one or two employees. So I suggested that the policy should either
be enforced, modified to fit the real need, or deleted, and opined that
I did not think it good policy, or wise, to have a rule that was clearly
and deliberately not enforced.

And so it is with the legalese on printed docs as such legalese applies
to PDF. Clearly one of the intents of PDF is to provide the end user
with the ability to print page ranges to a local printer, clearly an
intent is to provide up-to-date content by letting the end-user copy the
PDF by download, and clearly we do not intend to require every one of
the end-user's workstations to have an internet connection to get the
latest PDF; the PDF can be downloaded once and distributed to those PCs
that have our application installed.

For this, it seems nonsensical to have a traditional legal statement
aimed at printed documentation that prohibiting printing and copying of
a PDF online book.

But, maybe that's why I'm not a lawyer. And, given the political and
legal advantage that group has over the rest of our society, maybe I am
off-base.

Cheers and grins,

Sean

-----------------------------------------
Sean Brierley
Software Documentation Specialist
Haestad Methods 
http://www.haestad.com 
203-805-0572 (voice) 
203-597-1488 (fax)
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Byfield [mailto:bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com] 

Sean Brierley wrote:

> It's pretty funny. The legal beagles just don't seem to get that the
> point is to permit copying, printing, and duplicating of the PDF
across
> machines with the appropriate software installed.

I agree that lawyers often seem to be ridiculously cautious. However, 
you may not be getting the point either.
The purpose of legalese warnings isn't to go after everyone who copies 
the document. Obviously, doing so would be impossible, and a waste of
time.
Rather,the purpose is to have some defense if a copy is used in some way

harmful to the company - for example, if a rival company started using 
your company's work wholesale.
It's an elaborate ritual, really: lawyers draft material that sounds 
very different from their actual intent. Once you understand that, then 
legalest is just another of those ridiculous things that humans do, like

Shriner Parades and spending Sundays at the mall.

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