From Leo's mailbag:
> From: A Computer User
> Sent: June 07, 2006
> To: Ask Leo!
> Subject: Protecting an ebook
>
> Leo,
> i'm currently looking into producing an E book in PDF format,
> how do i go about protecting it from unauthorised
> reproduction, duplication or sharing? Can i protect it in any way?
I believe acrobat allows you to password protect a PDF, so that
in order to read it, the password must be supplied. You should also
mark the content such that it can't be copied to the clipboard, and
can't be printed (if that's what you want).
Ultimately all of these are hack-able. And certainly there's no way
to prevent a file, once downloaded, to be uploaded somewhere else or
shared with others - along with the password to open it.
In the long run, I expect that some kind of Digital Rights Management
might be required (check with Adobe to see if they have any solutions
in place for that - I'm not aware of any currently.) The problem with
DRM is that it can seriously inconvenience (and hence annoy) your customer,
depending on how it's done.
Good luck!
Thanks for asking,
Leo
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