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How much work do you want to do? Some ideas off the top of my
head...nothing is foolproof, but I've seen all of these used before:
- Create a version of the manual for each customer and without them
knowing, use a very specific sentence in some text that they would
use if they were going to reuse any of the information. Keep this in
a database. I'm sure you could come up with multiple ways of saying
the same thing for each version. If it does show up somewhere else,
you'll at least know where it leaked from.
- On each page, in the header and footer, place a unique serial
number. Depending on the means of delivery, place the same serial
number as a hidden comment so even if they edit it out, you could
turn on the hidden Serial #.
- Make the document password protected and they must call on the
phone and speak to a live person to get the password.
In all of these, it requires that a custom version be assigned to a
specific user. However, you will say that each is a custom-keyed
version against a user right on the cover, in BIG RED letters,
without telling them how.
> Tanja asked about securing a user's manual for the web hosting
> industry due to widespread plagarism.
=====
John Posada, Senior Technical Writer
"I am a bomb disposal expert. If you see me running, try to keep up." mailto:john -at- tdandw -dot- com, 732-259-2874
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