How to create a Read-Only PDF in .NET?

[John]

Greetings microsoft.public.dotnet.general,

Here is my problem: my boss wants to create a PDF file for our clients
that they can open (without entering a password) that cannot be viewed
or modified programmatically. This file may be passed on to our
clients' clients, and while we want everyone to be able to reuse (or
"re-view") the contents, we want to make it as difficult as possible
to programatically reuse the contents (as there are IP issues
involved).

I have looked at encrypting the PDF, but this appears to require a
password everytime the file is used. This, unfortunately, does not
work for our situation. I know that PDFs have two levels of
encryption: one for general viewing and one for modification. Putting
a password on modification and not general viewing does not solve our
problem either.

Any ideas as to how this could be achieved (or not)?

Thanks,

-=John

[Nick Malik]

Well, if the PDF viewer can read the file, then a program can read the file,
because the Adobe PDF viewer is a program.

The alternative is to create an application that you distribute to your
clients. You can then encrypt the PDF file, and only your viewer app can
decrypt it. Once it is decrypted, you may be able to feed it to a PDF
viewer from memory, which would prevent someone from copying it from the
hard drive. Look for PDF controls that you can embed into a rich client
that will accept the document from memory.

This is essentially how some other digital rights management stuff works.

TTBOMK, Microsoft's SDKs for Digital Rights Management don't have anything
in them for documents, just music and video. There may be a competitor
package that will handle documents, though. I haven't looked.

--- Nick

"John" <jj***********@mail.com> wrote in message
news:f1**************************@posting.google.c om...

Greetings microsoft.public.dotnet.general,

Here is my problem: my boss wants to create a PDF file for our clients
that they can open (without entering a password) that cannot be viewed
or modified programmatically. This file may be passed on to our
clients' clients, and while we want everyone to be able to reuse (or
"re-view") the contents, we want to make it as difficult as possible
to programatically reuse the contents (as there are IP issues
involved).

I have looked at encrypting the PDF, but this appears to require a
password everytime the file is used. This, unfortunately, does not
work for our situation. I know that PDFs have two levels of
encryption: one for general viewing and one for modification. Putting
a password on modification and not general viewing does not solve our
problem either.

Any ideas as to how this could be achieved (or not)?

Thanks,

-=John