Book People Archive

Re: Part 2 of PDF, DRM, and "open" formats 

David,

Thanks for the note.  Both you and Jon have now referred to "the OSoft
approach to DRM" without explaining what it is.  Can you post an
explanation of that approach, or a pointer to an explanation, so that
we can understand your writing by understanding your referent?  Thanks.

The key question in any discussion of "open" formats and DRM is
whether, given the format specification and the "key" to the document,
I can write an application (a reader) which will render the document
correctly.  For formats like OpenReader, which attempt to give the
owner of a document full power over it by allowing their reader to
apply different CSS styles, for instance, this access to the document
must necessarily be at a lower level than formats which allow less
customization.

Bill