PDF protection system, any?

12 years ago

if not, then why most of the file don't even have a password?

Some things to think about (in no specific order):

1. Because in reality a password isn't really offering you any real protection against those who want to obtain your product for free. People buy PDFs and then share them on other websites, send them via Skype or e-mail to their friends (even strangers).

2. Keep in mind that the vast majority of your customers are ethical and you will want to gauge how much effort you want to focus on the thiefs versus your paying customers.

3. You can put in some protection measures in place such as protecting your download page (there are systems that have this built in or you can invest in a separate program such as DLGuard).

Is there such a need for PDF protection? Of course there's a market for it. If someone can make such a PDF protection software, I think it will sell, as long as it's priced and positioned correctly.

RoD

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Andrew Mak

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Rod Cortez

Some things to think about (in no specific order):

1. Because in reality a password isn't really offering you any real protection against those who want to obtain your product for free. People buy PDFs and then share them on other websites, send them via Skype or e-mail to their friends (even strangers).

2. Keep in mind that the vast majority of your customers are ethical and you will want to gauge how much effort you want to focus on the thiefs versus your paying customers.

3. You can put in some protection measures in place such as protecting your download page (there are systems that have this built in or you can invest in a separate program such as DLGuard).

Is there such a need for PDF protection? Of course there's a market for it. If someone can make such a PDF protection software, I think it will sell, as long as it's priced and positioned correctly.

RoD

I previously run a membership service and got about 100 monthly subscribers, one day i found one of the buyer's downloaded 60+ times in W+, then only i found out i have a new 60+ intruders.

IMHO, a good lock is a must, but shouldn't take so much time to prepare it, because it is not worth to well protect the product that may only sold 50-100 copies.

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Alexa Smith

Banned 12 years ago

Some people are very self-defeatist about this issue. Many imagine that you because you can't have 100% product security, there's no point in trying at all, and no point in settling for anything less than that. I don't agree at all.

Many even believe (or claim to) that all the people who download illicit products from torrent/file-sharing/subfusc-headware sites "wouldn't ever have been paying customers anyway, so you're not really losing anything". This is obviously wrong: the world is full of people who, if they want a particular product, will search the web high and low for a free pirated copy and then buy it only if they can't find one.

I'm not technical enough to understand what you've come up with, but it sounds interesting.

I think e-Junkie's PDF-stamping gadget is quite clever, too. Again, it's not 100% security, of course, but I think it's a real deterrent to most illicit PDF file-sharing.

It's like having a good, extra mortise lock on your front door and "difficult" window-locks: it's not going to keep out a real pro-burglar but the reality is that 90%+ of them will go and break into someone else's house instead.

What I have great difficulty understanding is all the people who take great lengths to protect their download page but do absolutely nothing at all to protect the product itself. This seems to be almost "normal", but it doesn't make much sense to me. Still, what do I know? I'm "only an affiliate".

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SunilTanna

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

What I have great difficulty understanding is all the people who take great lengths to protect their download page but do absolutely nothing at all to protect the product itself. This seems to be almost "normal", but it doesn't make much sense to me. Still, what do I know? I'm "only an affiliate".

There are at least 4 reasons why they might do this:

1. It might be the only practical form of protection available to them given their choice of product format. As you said yourself, something is better than nothing.

2. Protecting your thankyou/download page is arguably more important than protecting the product itself.

The reason is that while hardcore pirates don't mind going to blackhat or hacker sites, these people are the ones least likely to buy anyway.

The squishy middle, the ones who will pirate if it's easy, but will pay if it's not easy to pirate ---- will probably be happy to download a free copy of they can get it from the official thankyou/download page - but may be nervous (or not know about) blackhats or hacker sites, which have a reputation for being full of viruses and spyware, etc.

3. If your thankyou/download page gets indexed into google or other search engines (not all of which obey robots.txt), you can be in a world of hurt. Not only will potential customers be offered a free copy, but some of them may not even realize they were supposed to pay (if they go direct from the search results).

4. For many products, not all the value is in the main download. There may be multiple downloads. There may be online support or access to online features. There may be all sorts of other stuff. In such cases, it is actual the thankyou/download page (which provides access to these features) that you want to protect, rather than a particular download file.

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JonVinci

12 years ago

It's definitely worth exploring. But at some point, you are going to start pissing off the people who buy your product. For me personally, when I buy a WSO pdf, I'd like to think that I bought to own and not to rent. I like having the file to drag and drop to my tablet and phone and read it wherever, even if I don't have an internet connection (which it sounds like I need going your method).

So if you were to try and make something like this, user experience has to be something that never suffers. That's what is most important.

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Andrew Mak

12 years ago

Alexa, Thanks for the Great tips and point out the importance & urgency of this "lock", i have created my own product and i know how hard is the process. therefore i just don't want my hard work share for nothing.

Currently i only see ppl [REQ] my product but have not found any real sharing yet, may be i am not that famous, lol

JonVinci, you have a good point too, where the product is "buy" not "rent", but if it require to use for offline or on a phone, then my trick may not work for this purpose.

keep brainstorming....

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Mark Singletary

12 years ago

The fact is that PDF passwords can be broken in 2 seconds flat.

If you are talking about phoning home to get a license key verification or something like that, that is the only real way to protect.

The only system I know of (but it's been awhile since I've explored this) is a server based solution developed by Adobe (forget the name) but it is very expensive.

If you are saying you have a little trick that does the same as their high end protection, that may be a good opportunity.

Then, though, you have those that work mainly offline or live where net access is still spotty or something and it may irritate a lot of people to not be able to read their ebook because the internet is down.

As far as buying versus renting, I don't see the point. It isn't renting it's verifying that what was bought/licensed is valid. MS and other big companies have millions of happy customers that use a license verification scheme of some sort.

Mark

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Andrew Mak

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Mark Singletary

The fact is that PDF passwords can be broken in 2 seconds flat.

If you are talking about phoning home to get a license key verification or something like that, that is the only real way to protect.

The only system I know of (but it's been awhile since I've explored this) is a server based solution developed by Adobe (forget the name) but it is very expensive.

If you are saying you have a little trick that does the same as their high end protection, that may be a good opportunity.

Then, though, you have those that work mainly offline or live where net access is still spotty or something and it may irritate a lot of people to not be able to read their ebook because the internet is down.

As far as buying versus renting, I don't see the point. It isn't renting it's verifying that what was bought/licensed is valid. MS and other big companies have millions of happy customers that use a license verification scheme of some sort.

Mark

Mark, in my little trick i have 2 protection layer.

Layer 1. after buyer brought the WSO, their paypal email will added to the licensing system on my side. so when they want to run it for 1st time they need to insert their paypal email. but after they open the pdf, then they still can download it and share the file or use it offline.

(with this layer of protection i think the sharing ratio will drop at least 30% because ppl will not expose them self with the paypal email license key, if i found anyone sharing the license key, then i will just remove it from my side)

Layer 2. will force the PDF only viewable online on a special browser and i will disable all the way for download the PDF.

i don't think a regular user can break this unless an expert. lol

but in terms of buying not renting and you point of verifying, i think layer 1 alone is also good.

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Mark Singletary

12 years ago

Could you do step one and not step two? I'm sure the browser is good but why replace all the tools available in the PDF reader? For example I have some PDFs with forms that are filled in in PDF reader. Can your browser solution do that?

Does the browser do away with copy and paste or printing to an image or scanner or something like that?

Does the browser do away with the ability to take screen shots?

Or as an alternative have a way to check if the PC's environment changes (Windows uses something like this) and if it does require phoning home again? For example they use Windows 7 when they license it and then later it's discovered they are using it on Windows XP. That may be a red flag.

I agree that a simple solution is best - look for the ROI - the biggest bang for the buck. You will never be able to fully protect everything.

I also believe that we should not get so paranoid that we stay broke and afraid to help others because someone might steal our stuff. I did that for too long.

Mark

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Andrew Mak

12 years ago

The browser is still using I.E functionality, i am just using a little trick to disable the function bar in step 2.

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songjiekun 11 years ago

Originally Posted by Andrew Mak

The browser is still using I.E functionality, i am just using a little trick to disable the function bar in step 2.

is your product available now? i am very interested about it.
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WillR

11 years ago

Ok, so what happens when I copy the content from your PDF just be re-writing it, and then share my pdf document on the download sites?

It kind of makes your tool useless. You can't lock a PDF. It just doesn't work.

If you don't want your content shared illegally then the only way to stop it is by never releasing your content in the first place.

Just like in the offline world how if you want a secret kept you never tell anyone... because someone will always blab and tell someone else.

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troy23

11 years ago

I don't think it is worth doing.
One of my PDF's is appearing on thousands of sites and it has brought me great traffic as a result for years. Unless you have created something completely groundbreaking it's not worth the hassle.

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bengirwb

11 years ago

Quote:

"But at some point, you are going to start pissing off the people who buy your product. For me personally, when I buy a WSO pdf, I'd like to think that I bought to own and not to rent."

Right. Tell this to Microsoft or Adobe when you buy one of their products. Tell them you paid big bucks and you want to pass around copies willy nilly.

Right.

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Cicak

11 years ago

Yes, HTML Executable is the best thing out there, you need to pay $200 for the software then £9.99/month, but it turns the eBook into an .exe, no screen prints, set the amount of activations, auto assign activation keys, log IP addresses, store email and customer information, block users from access if they chargeback etc.

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Cicak

11 years ago

HTML Executable - Website and Ebook Compiler Software (commercial addition needed)

with

Protect Ebook .net - Protection and Activation Service for Ebooks and Digital Publications (EUR 9.95 per month)

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Paul Myers 11 years ago

If you don't want your content shared illegally then the only way to stop it is by never releasing your content in the first place.

In any format.

A few years ago, one of these creeps tried to get me to trade him a copy of one of my products for a PDF of a much more expensive product. There were only 6 legitimate digital copies of that product in the world at the time, and this dude didn't get it from any of the people who had one.

Someone had taken a hard copy and scanned it. With the current crop of OCR software, this wouldn't even be a difficult process. (With a page-feed scanner, it wouldn't take more than a few minutes of personal time, if you're willing to strip the binding.)

If it can be printed, it can be easily pirated. And if your solution keeps people from printing what they've paid for, it's going to aggravate a lot of customers...

Paul
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goneebo

11 years ago

Check out axcrypt (free)

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PDF protection system, any?

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