secured PDFs

[Ken Poshedly]

It's more a matter of our verbage and/or images being copied and used in the documentation by competitors.

As a tech writer for two world-known heavy equipment companies over the past 17 years, I know first-hand that it is not uncommon for former technicians and trainers to be put in front of a keyboard and terminal to produce manuals when they get "too old" to travel long distances or for extended periods for training or service duties. Their skills are valued far more than their ability to write coherent text.


They obviously know every thread-pitch, ampere and torque of all bolts and everything else, but proper writing skills and observance of copyright laws are TOTALLY foreign to many of them. That is exactly what happened when I worked alongside a former friend who had been a trainer for many years but then got into technical writing. Cutting and pasting stuff verbatim from competitors' manuals was totally what he did. When I told him our company could theoretically get sued out of existence, he brushed it off.

In the real world, I don't know if that kind of stuff (being sued for using plagiarized text and graphics in construction equipment manuals) actually matters, but my job -- the way I see it -- includes protecting my employer from this kind of stuff.



On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 4:00 PM, "john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com" <john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com> wrote:
 

>
>
>Ken...just wondering...
>If a customer buys your product, what do you care if they make changes?
>
>John X Posada
>AML Syst & Ops Supt Data Analyst | US FCC & RC Systems Control & Analytics
>| HSBC North America Holdings Inc
>330 Madison Ave., NY NY
>                                                                
>_______________________________________________________________ 
>                                                                
>                                                                
>                                                                
>                                                                
>                                                                
>Phone                                                          
>      Int: 212-525-5483 Ext: Personal Cellphone - 732-259-2874  
>Fax                                                            
>      Conference Bridge - 877-304-0052, Code 74809254            
>Email                                                          
>      john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com                                  
>                                                                
>_______________________________________________________________ 
>Protect our environment - please only print this if you have    
>to!                                                            
>                                                                
>
>
>
>
>
>From:    Ken Poshedly <poshedly at bellsouth.net>
>To:    "tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com"
>            <tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com>, "Johnson, Joyce"
>            <JJohnson at abtg.com>
>Cc:    "framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
>Date:    03/03/2015 03:56 PM
>Subject:    Re: secured PDFs
>Sent by:    framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
>
>
>
>In addition to hard-copies of our manuals included in the operator cab of
>the heavy construction equipment my company manufactures and markets
>worldwide, we also make available pdf files of our manuals with passwords
>to prevent changes, copying text & images, etc.
>
>So far, we're not aware of any plagiarism or other unauthorized use of our
>stuff. At least not yet.
>
>-- Ken in Atlanta
>
>
>On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 3:33 PM, "tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com"
><tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com> wrote:
>
>
>We used to deliver user guides as secured PDFs; however, the security
>settings in Acrobat 9 never fully suited our needs. We have since upgraded
>to Acrobat 12, but I haven't checked if the settings are any better. That
>said, securing the documents ended up being more pain than it was worth.
>Too many users wanted to extract pages or do other things that we deemed
>were OK. We dropped the securing documents years ago. I know there is fear
>that someone could steal some trade secret (I never found one in our
>manuals), but as long as you are distributing a document in either PDF or
>print, you have to assume that sooner or later your competition will
>manage to get a copy.
>
>As far as protecting ourselves from someone modifying our documentation in
>a way that could expose us to liability for machine damage or personal
>injury, we cover ourselves (per the lawyers) by including disclaimers in
>the preface and noting that the documentation always remains our
>proprietary property and cannot be altered or duplicated without our
>permission. I'm sure that doesn't stop anyone, but the legal folks say
>that if a customer violates that clause, they place themselves at risk
>through no fault of ours.
>
>
>
>
>Tom Beiswenger
>Manager, Technical & Training Documentation, Project Manager - Inspection
>Business
>Emhart Glass Mfg. Inc.
>1140 Sullivan St.
>Elmira, NY 14901
>PH: +607 735-4279
>FX: +607 734-8278
>Mobile: +607 769-4779
>Email: tom.beiswenger at emhartglass.com
>
>
>
>From:        "Johnson, Joyce" <JJohnson at abtg.com>
>To:        "framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
>Date:        03/03/2015 03:14 PM
>Subject:        secured PDFs
>Sent by:        framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
>
>
>
>We deliver user guides (software and hardware) to customers  via
>password-protected pdfs, loaded onto servers and also posted on our
>customer web portal.
>
>I’m wondering how members of this group deliver customer-facing documents.
>Do you use pdfs? If so, do you secure those pdfs? If you secure them, how
>do you accommodate in-house colleagues who request unsecured pdfs so they
>can extract pages and images?
>
>Thanks in advance for your responses.
>
>Joyce
>
>Joyce M. Johnson
>AmerisourceBergen
>Lead Technical Writer
>Technology Group
>
>1400 Busch Parkway
>Buffalo Grove, IL 60089
>
>847.808.5875
>888.537.3102 ext 15875
>
>www.abtg.com
>
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