I've been asked by a customer if I can "lock" the metadata in their various geodatasets. I immediately asked why and was told that they don't want other organizations/users editing/deleting certain tags.
A quick search hasn't really turned anything up.
Anyone have any ideas/suggestions on how I could accomplish this?
Metadata is a dynamic thing. "Locking" it probably wouldn't be wise, even if you could. For example, if they reproject your dataset, then the metadata will be incorrect if it were "locked".
My suggestion is to publish the metadata separately in a clearinghouse and distribute your dataset with links permanent URL to the to "authoritative" metadata. The link could be stored both in the metadata and in an accompanying readme.txt file to ensure users are aware of its existence.
