Stopping photocopying, take II

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Suzette Seveny reported <<There used to be a company in Toronto that
marketed a paper that was impossible to photocopy.  It was called
"Nocopy" paper, and it was almost maroon in colour.  If you tried to
copy it, the copy came out completely black.>>

I'd be very surprised if they're still in business. Any color
difference that the human eye can detect (i.e., anything with enough
contrast between foreground and background color that you can read
the words) should be relatively easy to scan with a cheap color
scanner. Drop the file into Photoshop, select the background color,
delete it, and voila! If the designers of the paper are really
clever, you might actually have to take a few more steps, but it
shouldn't be a particularly onerous job. (Worst case, you might
have to put a colored acetate over the scanner's scanning bed to
change the color of the light being used to scan the document.) Worse
yet, you can now OCR the scanned file and redistribute it
electronically. As I said, technology isn't the solution.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Patience comes to those who wait."--Anon.

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