How might I post a PDF book draft to the web for [selective] viewing, while preventing any copying?
http://tiny.cc/DHbio http://tiny.cc/6JZfi
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M$4 Answers
1. What some in the electronic world advocate is extending your brand and content (body of work) that makes people want to pay you for your expertise. That is true for photos, music, literature, info, etc.
2. That being said, GOOGLE DOCs allows you to post a document that you can designate as private, but allows you to invite only certain people (via a password) to view it, and then comment. The visitors don't get to make changes, save it, download it -- unless you allow them to. (You determine if visitors can download the document, or just view & comment., etc.) But visitors can post comments (kinda like electronic post-it notes) on the document. Give you feedback, etc.. Google Docs is free to use, but you will need to sign up for an account.
Google Docs -
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26tab%3Dno&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26tab%3Dno<mpl=homepage&rm=false
But again, there is nothing to stop these people from taking screen shots (or just writing down all the text/ideas, if they had that kind of time.) And if you don't trust them, then don't send the doc to them (right?)
3. Also, perhaps you want to inquire w/ an attorney as to COPYRIGHTING even your drafts of this document/work. You should still place a legal copyright designation on your drafts (too). The Copyright symbol or even legal copyright filings won't stop people from stealing the work, but it will give you some legal ability to sue someone later should they steal parts or all of the document. (As an architect, I have to do the same thing w/ all my designs and plans, etc. Because contractors and others do steal architectural works all the time.)
We've seen w/ music, people will pay for items that they really like and when they really LIKE and want to support the artist/author.
If you can't live with the idea (really, the fact) of someone stealing the electronic document, then maybe the best course is to stick with traditional distribution methods.
(Also, I think we could all do w/ a little less sniping on this site. If someone can't read your mind, or is silly, no need to point it out. It's obvious for everyone to see. A constructive reply is warranted stating why an answer or response is useful or not. Some seem very thin-skinned and are to quick to snipe back at people, even when the person they are sniping back at is in the wrong. It is easier for some to be rude online, when they wouldn't have the backbone to say the same thing (in the same manner) in a face-to-face encounter. Because the fact is, for every bit of sniping you throw out, people will use it against you later on this site and elsewhere.)
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M$One good place to host an online PDF is www.scribd.com, I've got some documents up there myself. You could always check out Lulu.com, which is a self-publishing shop. People pay to get access to your e-book. However, I'm not sure once 1 person has paid for it whether there is protection to keep him from just posting it on the torrent sites.
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M$
Shakespeare, I think you make a good point, that by posting one work for free, generally stimulates people to buy other works (or even the original). I've seen photographers give away a small or low-res version of a photo, but find people will pay for a better print of the higher resolution original.
By the way, I suppose one question to ask as well is how much you trust your invitees? if all you do is send the PDF directly to some trusted associates via email, the odds of them going out of their way to post it go down drastically.
Also, one method used by print-on-demand shops (like Pragmatic Programmers) is to encode the recipient's name right in the book ("Prepared for Shakespeare Geek"...) That way if it does show up on the torrent sites, you stand a better chance of knowing who leaked it.
Good luck.
On the subject of "proof", how about Neil Gaiman? July, 2008:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080714/1150181670.shtml
He convinced his publisher to put up one of his works online for free, and they found that sales of all his works increased.
Wanted to get that out there. Looking for details on the password protecting thing now and will get back to you ASAP.
Thank you for this information. I immediately went to scribd.com, registered, and uploaded my book.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the details. In looking for a more specific answer, let me reply to a few of your comments. This is a draft, a "beta", and is for only a handful of invitees. It would be inappropriate to try to generate sales from such, and while familiar with the "big author" anecdote, I haven't seen any proof to back it up. In any case, I'm not yet a big name author.
I do have a relatively substantial following on Scribd (DoHop), thanks. I do have a Lulu account, and a few others. Using them for advanced layout drafts.
As a 30 year [retired] commercial photographer, my income depended on single, precious images, often acquired with immense effort and expense, so by habit alone I'm not anti-"DRM" inclined, that is, freely tossing out my income earners to the public. On the other hand, I'm also not uptight about a couple of hackers attacking my book draft. I presently own a luxury fragrance atelier and when our lawyer brought up the brand knock-offs found everywhere in New York, I replied we could only wish to be so established as to be desirable in such cheap street versions! But that discussion is not what I seek here.
Can you go a step further and detail what is to be done in Adobe to password protect? I find Adobe to be nearly inscrutable, and the "help" useless. Simple protection is what I'm looking for, especially if there isn't any other method, such as a safelist controlled site...with stats.
Douglas
Some good replies here...let me check them out. In the meanwhile a Google on "protected document distribution" (took me some tries to word the search) yielded this: http://www.acrolok.com/
Regarding password protection, I found this tip on Lifehacker:
http://lifehacker.com/photogallery/Top-10-PDF-Tricks/2384376
who are generally considered pretty good in their tutorials and explanations. Over in a parallel universe, Yahoo Answers offered the following in response to the same question literally within the past day: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090125032407AAqUCqn
If, however, you want people to be able to access your book online after buying it, I'm afraid that there is no way to prevent someone from copying and distributing your book online. I have seen copies of major booksellers PDF files online.
Sorry!
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M$
My book, Real Views, won't be up on the web searching for a publisher or being hawked to the public. If that were the question, I would have asked it. The book has fortunately won a national publishing contest, but needs refinement I can't give it. Thank you.
Well...I can't put everything I didn't want in my question, and most people got the point. Nevertheless, thanks for answering and providing some inspiration for the future. What's your book's title?
Yet you didn't put THAT in your question. Either way, my answer remains unchanged.
I believe your primary goal is for this to be human readable only and not convertable to a machine readable text format. Assuming that:
Any document that can be displayed on the screen as text can be copied and converted to text.
To accomplish your goal of no text copies, you must convert your document to an image and distort the image enough that OCR software will not be able to convert it back to text. You might be able to accomplish this distortion by using some funky font that OCR can't recognize. Bear in mind however that although you might accomplish this, it will still be possible for the viewer to make and share a copy of your image.
ANYTHING WHATEVER THAT CAN BE DISPLAYED ON THE SCREEN CAN BE COPIED AND SHARED.
There are several ways to convert your document to an image file but that would be another question/answer.Good luck with your book.
PS
Selective access can be controlled by logins and passwords. Again a totally different subject best handled by your hosting company
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M$
Primary goal is not preventing OCR, it is to block acquisition of the intellectual content without purchase, i.e., reading it freely online. Your answer is technically good, although distorting it so much as to prevent even Scansoft OmniPage from scanning it (They claim the program interprets curved pages, such as in open bound books.) will also distort the photos too much. Thank you for the best wishes.
Yep...have SkyDrive, and even better, Drop.io. I haven't been able to make those work well, but I may return to this method. The problem with direct email is the huge size of the book. This again takes me back to my Adobe ignorance; how do you diminish file size? And maybe thereby take the book into "ugly" enough low rez that it wouldn't be so attractive to copy out.
You are exactly right, there is an obscure ability I also once found with some ISP's, to password protect a file folder on your web address. But once the password is out, that's it.
It would seem this is basic protection many documents might need, controlled distribution with a record of who sees it. Startup, anyone?
Although it is way beyond my ability, I've noticed that you can't copy Flash pages...is that so? What does it take to convert 100 pages to Flash?
Although I agree that this method, along with copy protecting the access to the images containing the text would be the most secure, I doubt that is what this individual is after. His previous comments seem to indicated he'd be okay with "moderate" security.
My suggestion. Email it. This way you can directly control who receives a copy of the file, and I imagine you would trust these people to not steal it. If a zipped, password protected version of the PDF could be emailed then that might be exactly what you need.
If emailing is out of the question, host the file on a password protected folder in SkyDrive. Skydrive is a microsoft product (if you have a Live ID, then you can have Skydrive) that gives you 25GB of free online storage space. You could upload your protected PDF and then only share the password protected link with those you want reading. By no means foolproof, but a good attempt at security.
Great reply.
I apologize for the "sniping", wasn't really intended, but that's how hasty web stuff sometimes lands.
You have hit the exact vein I am in with regards to protection, Google Docs sounds good, thanks for providing the link, too. Let me check it out for format limitations, if any. I have just about every Google product possible, except that and the drawing program, neither seemed sophisticated.
Please let me know your architectural work (I won't use it on my house!), use DouglasHopkins@gmail.com for initial contact.
Yeah, the more I think about it, maybe you use the software model:
For the final copy, post a lower /lite version (w/ less info, fewer bells & whistles, maybe low-res) for the internet or electronic delivery, but make a higher resolution, full-info version of your book (hard copy) available for sale via a web site and/or Amazon.
For draft copies, you'll still need to copyright each version.. and maybe you make all "beta" /draft versions low-res with a unique serial number.
As to copyright. I am certainly not an attorney but I do know this. If you put a copy right notice on the document it is copyrighted. If you do not, it is probably public domain. Unfortunately it is up to you to enforce the copyright.
Great minds think alike...only mine is frequently impeded by senior moments. Popped over the Google Docs, courtesy your direct link, only to discover not only having a space there, I had five months ago, with a server scare, uploaded for safety the book plus my wife's doctoral thesis. Exploring it more thoroughly this time, I found download prevention, invitation only, plus Google Analytics automatically linked up! My entire checklist. Thank you kindly.