a document rights management system defines an unrenderable origin designator in a media item that does not display or alter the physically rendered version of an instantiation of the media item . the unrenderable designator does not appear as an obscured or occluded feature in a printed or displayed versions . the rendered version is unaffected by the unrenderable designator because it does not result in any displayable features . the unrenderable designator is stored in a display list of the media item and appears as an attribute of objects such that the function to cause the display object to be undisplayable , or unrenderable , are not immediately apparent . the drm system encodes a designator in an attribute of a display object for rendering according to a media rendering format such as pdf , such that the designator causes the display object to be unrenderable and indicates the origin of the media item .