[LINK] protecting online content - AFR technique

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Tom Worthington wrote:

>  At 12:12 PM 28/04/2008, Sylvano wrote:
>
> > ... AFR ( http://www.afr.com/ ) has implemented some CSS magic to
> > provide an extra level of frustration to online content copiers ...
> >
>
>
>  AFR have scrambled the text of articles and then use CSS to
>  unscramble them. This is done so if you attempt to copy the text you
>  get unreadable characters. But this may stop adaptive technology
>  designed for people with vision impairment from working
>  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_technology>. AFR therefore may
>  in breech of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992
> 
<http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/WWW_3/www_3.html#s2_2>.
>
>
>  For a quick test I selected the article "Chance to bid for $60m ATO
>  desktop" (30 Apr 2008, The Australian Financial Review,Ben Woodhead):
> 
<http://www.afr.com/home/viewer.aspx?EDP://20080430000020603558&magsection=news-information&title=Chance+to+bid+for+%2460m+ATO+desktop&source=/_xmlfeeds/information/feed.xml#wrap-home>
>
If you look at the source, you can find the two parts of the text (I've 
only included the first paragraph):

<!-- START OF DRM VIEWER -->
<div id="PNL_DRM">

<div id="viewer">
<span id="LBL_ViewerContent"><div id="c"></div>

<div id='a' class='float'>

<p>T e  u t a i n 
 a a i n  f i e  s 
 i i g  u i e s   
s c n  b t  a  i s $  
b l i n  n o m t o  
t c n l g  o t o r i g 
 r j c  a t r  t 
 p n d  p  i d n  f r 
  $6  m l i n   y a  
d s t p  o p t r 
 e v c s  o t a t.</p><br/>
</div>
....

<div id='b' class='float'>

<p> h  A s r l a  
T x t o  O f c  i  
g v n  b s n s  a 
 e o d  i e  t  t  $1 
 i l o  i f r a i n 
 e h o o y 
 u s u c n  p o e t 
 f e  i  o e e  u  
b d i g  o  a $ 0 
 i l o  a  e r  e k o  
c m u e  s r i e  
c n r c .</p><br/>


</div></span>
</div>

</div>
<!-- END OF DRM VIEWER -->

I extracted this section into Word. As a text editor Word is useful 
because you can specify things like tab and paragraph characters. With a 
combination of "find and replace", text to table, playing around with 
columns and table to text, it was quite easy to re-build the text. 
Whatever the AFR uses to create this mess, they don't worry about non 
alphanumeric characters and double up on punctuation and $ characters 
which have to be removed more or less by inspection.

It would be reasonably easy to write a C program that did the same sort 
of thing, but unless its something that you want to do frequently its 
not worth it.

What I ended up after a few minutes editing was:

The Australian Taxation Office is giving business a second bite at its 
$1 billion information technology outsourcing project after it opened up 
bidding for a $60 million a year desktop computer services contract.

The agency also firmed up the anticipated values of all three of the 
outsourcing bundles that it will put to market as it winds down its 
existing $2 billion agreement with Electronic Data Systems Australia.

The ATO had previously said that the first of the three bundles, known 
as managed network services, was worth $55 million a year and that it 
would spend $200 million a year on all three bundles for a period of 
five years.

With the release yesterday of a request for expressions of interest in 
the second bundle, dubbed end-user computing, it’s now known that the 
contracts for the ATO’s desktop and mainframe services will be worth 
about $60 million and $85 million a year respectively.

The Tax Office has already shortlisted four finalists for the managed 
network services bundle and it is now calling for proposals from 
prospective desktop and laptop computer outsourcers. The firms 
shortlisted for the managed network services contract are Computer 
Sciences Corporation, Dimension Data, Telstra and Optus.

CSC, along with fellow outsourcing big guns EDS and IBM, is likely to 
bid for the desktop services contract, which represents the best 
remaining opportunity for local players such as Commander Communications 
and UXC to pick up a piece of the ATO’s coveted outsourcing business.

The mainframe services contract is almost certain to go to IBM, CSC, EDS 
or possibly Fujitsu.

The ATO said in the end-user computing contract that it was seeking 
support services for about 32,,700 desktop and laptop computers, more 
than 1700 printers, 800 photocopiers and 370 servers that it uses to 
store emails and files.

The agency currently spends $39 million a year maintaining the fleet of 
equipment but said that figure would rise to about $60 million under the 
new outsourcing contract because it included costs associated with 
updating computing hardware.

Businesses have until May 26 to register their interest in the end-user 
computing contract and the ATO will use the responses to compile a 
shortlist of finalists that it will put through a series of workshops 
before calling for final bids.

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au