Re: Disabling screen capture
Re: Disabling screen capture
- Subject: Re: Disabling screen capture
- From: "Bradley O'Hearne" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 09:54:40 -0700
On Feb 20, 2014, at 4:23 PM, email@hidden wrote:
>> On 2014/02/21, at 8:05, Stevo Brock <email@hidden> wrote:
>>
>>> On Feb 20, 2014, at 2:39 PM, Jens Alfke wrote:
>>>
>>> If I were trying to circumvent this I'd just use my iPhone camera to take a photo or video of the screen. (Or open my web browser and search for pictures taken by someone else who did.) As there's no way to block that, why bother?
...
>>>
>>> Why not follow the proverb "Locks are there to keep honest people out”,
...
>>> Some things just aren't worth doing.
>>
>> I don't know if you have this in place or not, but what about embedding some identifying information in the midst of the important content, such that if posted images were discovered, they could be traced back?
...
> That sort of thing is defeated easily by accident with image resizing alone.
….
> Really seriously evaluate the risks and trade offs before making commitments with these kind of requirements.
Gents…thanks for all of the replies, just a few responses:
- Yes, there will always be external means to copy content. But that doesn’t make the need to protect content ridiculous, and our scope of responsibility is the app’s environment on the computer, not external hardware. (One other note — these tests are video-proctored, so the user is under constant watch by a proctor, so you can’t pull out your iPhone and start snapping pics).
- This isn’t a requirement I have any control over. I am merely tasked with figuring out how to provide the behavior.
- This is a feature which isn’t a negotiable even for my client in order to gain certain potential customers business. Their content has to be secured, or the product can’t be used. It is a deal-breaker, so there’s no negotiable there either.
- A kiosk-type environment isn’t some kind of wacky edge use-case. The question really distills down to whether or not OS X provides APIs that allow an app to facilitate a secure kiosk-type environment. Maybe the design philosophy behind OS X is opposed to this scenario / use-case. I hope that isn’t the case, but if it is, that’s an answer, and while not the desired answer, we can move forward with the knowledge that OS X kiosks aren’t an option.
- Watermarking isn’t really an option, even tracing doesn’t help, because that doesn’t mitigate the damage done. The issue isn’t copyrighting, or even catching the person who has copied content after the fact. The issue is preventing the copying of proprietary test content and destroying a costly investment in the development of certification exams.
In conclusion — the need for this is absolutely huge in scope. This need touches every school, college, and organization with testing of any kind on the planet (that’s just our present scope). But beyond that, being able to deliver content in secure fashion is a fundamental need in education, financial, medical, legal, government, and defense industries. So again, it is just a question of whether OS X is an appropriate OS for this — I’d like to think it is.
Brad
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