How to avoid contents to be copied? (Flash format?)

Hi.

Working with the last version of Foswiki, I'm trying to know if it's possible not to allow users to copy contents from the wiki.

I mean, several people have the rights to edit contents with the regular web editor, but the rest of users will view the pages in, e.g., Flash format. Other possibilities could be PDF-protected format.

I know this is an odd issue, but I'm planning an internal corporate knowledge wiki and some managers do not want contents to be easily extracted.

Any similar experience is appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

---

The only way to prevent people from copying information is access rights. So if you don't want people to access certain data, you will need to restrict access rights on it. See AccessControl for more information.

Technically, as soon as people are allowed to access and make use of data on the internet using a browser, they effectively are about to make a copy of the data while loading it into their browser.

From an organizational point of view it is quite normal to enforce an existing information policy even on wikis. That's quite natural to do. Foswiki allows you to do exactly that in the way required in a very fine-grained way. That's one of the key features of enterprise wikis.

Approaches to information policy generally take two distinct approaches:

• (a) All information is access controlled and only a few pages are open for everyone. People get explicit clearance as part of their role in the organization.
• (b) All information is accessible to all members of the organization. Only a few pages are access restricted with only a very small group of people taking care of that information.

The pros and cons of both approaches are quite obvious: approach (a) requires quite an amount of information management and people all too often run into walls. In approach (b) all employees have access to information as soon as they need it to make decisions. Having to ask for permission might not always lead to good results or people might not even know that there is information important for them.

So in (a) every employee is basically suspicious and a potential thief, so to say. In contrast approach (b) requires a no trivial amount of trust.

Other technical approaches might include intrusion detection and similar not directly related to Foswiki as a service in your organization.

-- MichaelDaum - 26 Apr 2012