How to protect your products?

check this out Protectedpdf: Video Tour

is it really worth it with your file to protect it?

Being a person who likes to keep things simple, I think having a password for each copy is unnecessary (This I can see will trigger a chain of customer support questions). What you can do is to protect your download page from prying eyes. One way to do is easily and cheaply is to use e-junkie. I just wrote a review today and you can read it here:

Why E-Junkie Has Become My Favorite Payment Processor and Shopping Cart? — AbelCheng.com

IMHO, you should focus your efforts on more productive stuff.

In a larger perspective, there are many pirated DVDs around but filmmakers still continue producing movies. Same goes to software.

Protecting the download link doesn't stop people from "sharing" copies of the actual PDF file.. and PDF password protection is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

I think the ideal solution would be "stamping" the PDF with certain unique identifiable information (say, the purchaser's real name and email address) on the server when the file is downloaded. It might not discourage "casual copying" but someone might think twice before putting their real name and email address on, say, a Warez forum or Rapdishare where it could be picked up by any number of spammers and scammers. Not to mention if the author gets ahold of a pirated copy they have irrefutable evidence proving who originally leaked it (and if it's a monthly subscription service.. like, say, Angela or Paul's backlink packets.. the author knows who to stop sending the PDF files to).

ProtectedPDF is good but wayy outta my budget I want to limit the reader access to one computer. So it won't be readable for another person and therefore sharing won't occur. What Steven said is awesome, we must include the complete payment details in the ebook at the last. Like the payee's phone number, email id, name, etc. This would be awesomer , e-junkie has enabled this thing, but I am currently using aMember. So, any one has the solution?

Hey Dennis,

Thank you very much. I guess I can protect my zip files with that zip brander. I'll check it out ASAP

Akky, in that case, you might consider ebookpro by the late Corey Rudl.

abelacts,

Do you know something like protectedpdf? ebook pro wont accept paypal when paying .

I would like to hear more replies from you warriors , What about something like machine limit. Like the user can use the pdf only on one computer , Is that possible in any way ? Please lead me in the right way

Hi!

I have developed license server to protect my software(some IM tool) it checks computer hardware and validity of license. The idea is that buyers will download not PDF file but small piece of software like viewer for pdf files but it will be well protected and contact license server to check license. Also we can control if they use the software on different PC- we can prohibit or limit it also.

Sadly, PDF files don't support a "machine limit" or anything like that. The best security Adobe offers is the good old "screen door on a submarine" (password protection).

I'm looking into (for my own use, and possibly a product to sell in the future) a way to stamp PDF files at the point of download with the customer's real name and email address, but the problem is I want to do it in PHP and the only solutions I've found so far require one of two things:

1) PHP's PDFLib extension installed on the server (A lot of hosts don't support this, depending on the host you may or may not be able to talk them into installing/enabling it for you.)

2) Actually building the PDF from an HTML source file on the server (This can be done in pure PHP, no need for PDFLib or anything like that, but who really wants to build all their PDFs as HTML? Personally I'd rather work with Word or OpenOffice for PDFs and save the HTML for what it's meant for, web pages.)

Steven,

ProtectedPDF.com does the machine limit thing on PDF, it's a really powerful software from what i've seen on their site. But It's $1200 yearly ($100 per month).

G'day,
Akky

The thing is anyone can honestly take a PDF file or anything you put out there and turn it into their own and give it away for free or sell it as their own. There is always this issue out there and always will be. A simple membership site that only allows IP access by 3 or less is enough of a protection for your products I believe. I would say don't worry so much about protecting your data on overkill and spend more time building your product up into a launch and out there in front of people so they get excited about it and want to pick it up right now. Your going to be far more successful spending your time in this area instead of overkill on protection of your product.

E-junkie's PDF stamping feature was developed keeping two things in mind. First, customer's experience should be streamlined. Second, discourage people from copying the PDF files and sharing it with others.

DRM may protect your product but it is not viable for a merchant because of many issues such as poor buyer experience, unsupported by PDF readers and additional customer support issues for the merchants to handle .

I am simply reiterating what Steven and Akky have said above that PDF stamping will not only keep your buyer's experience the same but also discourage buyers from sharing the product.

Let me know if you have any questions.

1. Create 2 versions of the same ebook - one is full edition, second is promotional - first 10 pages + 11-th page with "buy full version here" link.

2. Setup membership site where members will get access to your ebook via YOUR-SITE/premium/ebook.pdf link.

If full member will click: YOUR-SITE/premium/ebook.pdf - he will see full version.
If visitor/non-member will try to access *the same* URL: YOUR-SITE/premium/ebook.pdf - he will see promotional version.

Full members will be able to read ebook and print it right out of their browsers. At the same time sharing links with "friends" will not work - non-members will see only promotional version of your book. It will work to your advantage in many ways:
- You'll get SEO benefits from indexing of your "promo" edition on Google automatically.
- You'll get minimal amount of hassles for paid people - no annoying protections embedded anywhere.
- You'll get protection against sharing of direct downloadable links.

Of course some premium member could always go through trouble of copying, saving and then spreading your ebook around - but that's the fact of life. At least you covered your bases to the best.

Also advantage of membership site approach would be the ability to have access to "updates" for members.

PS: software at my signature does all above.

Gleb

PS: I just added these new features to MemberWing that might be of interest to membership site owners and digital product sellers.
In particular - the ones who are concerned about protection your digital property:

* Digital download protection - link sharing to downloadables of premium products won't work any more.
* Automatic substitution of premium downloads with "promo" materials when free visitors (non members) click on download link. Great for promotional presentations, website visitor stickiness, SEO and portal visitor engagement.
* Theft protection (TraceFusion). If premium member/buyer illegally shares or distributes your PDF ebook or any digital product anywhere - and you found copy of such product on internet - you'll be able to find exactly who did it and when. I think lots of membership site owners will find this feature handy to crack down on content thiefs and misbehaving members who joined your site to get a "group buy" (1 pays, 50 buddies share it).

The way theft protection works - is that any premium material that leaves your site is automatically, invisibly and digitally signed with identity of the person who downloads it. And if this person is member - the copy that he gets will have his name, email, IP address, date time, etc... engraved into invisible and encrypted digital signature.

All these features are automatically "on" - zero configuration - no tweaking required. If that sounds handy - feel free to ask me questions.

Gleb

not sure it is really worth it to do that kind of thing.

Tho it might be a good marketing point.... This ebook is so secret that we had to protect it or something like that....

Make it a feature not a hassle.

There plenty of people who want the product but they'd search torrent sites first. If not found - then they do buy it.
I experienced that first hand.

Second - there are private communities of people that do "group buys". 1 pays - 50 gets it for 1/50 of a price. Closing this loop hole *would* and *will* let seller to earn a good chunk of extra cash that otherwise would be lost. Stompernet and many famous marketers are losing tons of cash due to that - and I know it for a fact. If it's just a matter of installing plugin to avoid that leak and make extra thousands $$$ - it should be no brainer.

Gleb

if the product is digital then there is NO WAY to protect it period.
if the book as a password then transmit the password.
If the book does an online check then copy the content.
If you have very hard ass DRM then people will not buy it because it is too much of a hassel.

If people want to share the thing they will share it. As simple as that.

The music and movie industry burn through millions and millions of cash trying to prevent that and they failed miserably.

I maintain that it is better to educate the customer, give them freebies with the key you provide or stuff like that. but locking the product is not a solution.

If you're talking about pdfs, doesn't pdf professional allow you to set security options (like only open on one computer)?

I was curious about this myself as I tried to use and and to date still haven't figured out how to get it to work