NUL Copyright

SAE removes DRM from papers

As reported in its news blog, the MIT Libraries have re-established access to the Society of Automotive Engineers digital library after SAE agreed to remove Digital Rights Management (DRM) measures from its papers. SAE had been using an Adobe Acrobat plugin called File Open to restrict use of the paper after download.

Professor of Mechanical Engineering (and SAE fellow) Wai Cheng requested the DRM removal at a 2007 meeting of the Publication Board, and wrote about it in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of the Faculty Newsletter:

"How would you feel about colleagues who wish to read a paper you wrote for a professional organization being limited in the number of times they were allowed to print it? Or you being restricted in the number of students to whom you could distribute another colleague’s paper? These are precisely some of the limitations imposed by organizations who employ the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology for their technical publications."

SAE is not the only publisher using DRM, of course: the File Open software is used by a number of commercial and educational publishers. Harvard Business School Publishing had used a similar technology formerly known as Sealed Media (a student user described his frustrations with this solution in a 2007 post on his blog) but has reportedly reverted to plain PDF download. XanEdu digital course packs use the File Open DRM software. I've struggled with the PDF restrictions Educause places on papers from its library.

by Claire Stewart | News | TrackBack