I have been handed a problem by the Head: Not sure that I can meet all requirements

[6Foot2]

...Might wanna invest in one of these?

One of what?

 

[Seb1780]

At our school you'd just let one person read it and then the office gossip would have it disseminated by the end of the day.

[ADMaster]

Google also has an option to prevent printing / downloading.

Google will also give you an audit trail of who opened it.

[unixman_again]

Impossible. Even if you printed it on paper and glued it to a wall all it would take is a photo...

What about if the reader had to go into the room naked? Would be painful to smuggle in a camera

 

As has been said, this is a policy issue.

[TechMonkey]

I think it was the Azure Information Protection that we played with that if you tried taking a screenshot it would blank the document. It was very cool. PDF can prevent altering, printing and saving as long as you have an editor, not just a basic creator.

[ozydave]

Can't be done. s others have said, snipping tools are great

[m25man]

And these people teach our kids!

How Sad...

[abaxter2]

As everyone has already said you will not be able to stop taking a photo etc but if you use office 365 you could use the following:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/information-protection/deploy-use/configure-usage-rights#do-not-forward-option-for-emails

 

This would not allow the user to forward / print or copy, it's also free for education.

[Matt_NetSupport]

Sounds like a Mission Impossible film plot!

[6Foot2]

Sounds like a Mission Impossible film plot!

 

Changing my name to Ethan Hunt...

 

[Wubbalubbadub]

I have been sent a document by the Head. The Head would like me to share this document with staff on our network, but there are caveats.

 

For reasons that are too complex to go into here the shared document MUST:

 

1. Be read only
   
2. Not printable
   
3. Be copy protected (user cannot save as when viewing, or right click and copy file as a whole)
   
4. Have its contents protected (user cannot highlight sections of text and copy them to the clipboard, or other, for pasting into another document later)
   

You get the idea: Users should be able to view it, but not take it away. I have no special software tools available to me just a standard vanilla educational network.

 

Can it be done? I think not.

 

By head.. do you mean the president!? What on earth are you protecting!?

[Mistert89]

In another life, a corporate document was printed in black on purple so that it couldn’t be photo-copied in departments.... just passed round to read. So the manager had the secretary copy type it......

[dhicks]

Only one letter/number/word displayed at a time so no risk of a screenshot being taken or the whole document?

 

Not, actually, a bad idea - have a document rendered as an image server-side, then cut it up into sigle-line strips that you display on screen for the user as they move the mouse pointer down the screen. As people have pointed out, that's not going to stop a determined user with a camera / screen grabbing software, but it might stop a good percentage of users in some situations. Actually, that machanism has uses other than just anti-copying - it might make quite a nice screen-reading utility for learners who just need to concentrate on one line at a time, or you could add text-to-speech as well.

 

For anti-copying purposes, you could consider adding watermarking to your documents. It would mean you'd have to share a separate copy with each user, but if you did find copies around (either printed or in physical form) you could trace the source. That still doesn't stop someone running, say, a PDF document through an OCR utility, though.

[southhamster]

Yes, that's better. You could create the doc with a giant font and huge line spacing so visible onscreen would be minimal.

[mavhc]

Giant scrolltext, on a crt set to 47Hz, so when you try to film it it looks terrible, you're also strapped into a vibrating chair attached to the monitor, that moves in random directions, controlled by a lava lamp

[6Foot2]

Giant scrolltext, on a crt set to 47Hz, so when you try to film it it looks terrible, you're also strapped into a vibrating chair attached to the monitor, that moves in random directions, controlled by a lava lamp

 

OK. So replies in this thread have become 'Ways that you can torture your teaching staff'

 

This is no bad thing.

 

[MkII]

If the document had an encrypted key to validate it's authenticity referred to in plain sight would that meet the requirements?

[andy_b]

Employ a Navajo* speaker.

 

Get them to type the document in Navajo.

 

They can then read the document to staff as and when required.

 

*Or another obscure language

[6Foot2]

Employ a Navajo* speaker.

 

Get them to type the document in Navajo.

 

They can then read the document to staff as and when required.

 

*Or another obscure language

 

Link: Navajo: The Unbreakable Code of WWII

 

[Katy]

You give each member of staff a section of a few words, then as an inset day it's a teamwork session for them to piece together their fragments to make the document.

[maark]

It is written on goat skin parchment and you get get d+t to make a wooden seal you reseal it with red wax after someone has viewed it.

[dhicks]

You get the idea: Users should be able to view it, but not take it away.

 

Hmm - just saw this, via Hacker News (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256524):

 

https://www.helprange.com/

 

Might be something along the lines of what you were looking for - probably a couple of months late now, but maybe for next time.