Starforce shuts Adobe PDF scanning door

The plug-in, Starforce Protection PDF, binds PDFs to protected disks, whether CD/DVD-ROM or CD-R, so that they can't be opened and viewed by other programs.

The firm said that Starforce PDF is aimed at developers and book publishers that want to prevent ebooks and ezines, and other text and graphics files, from being distributed without the original disk being present in a users' PC.

The module becomes part of Acrobat Reader when it's installed.

Starforce will introduce the technology at the Frankfurt Book Fair which starts on October the 9th, it said.

A representative of the firm told the INQUIRER that the software will also prevent PDFs being imported into scanning packages.

But she conceded that people could still take screenshots of PDFs - which could then by copied into scanning software.

She said: "Basically, this makes stealing much more complicated than creating the product all over again." µ