About Justin VanAlstyne Expertise I have a full working knowledge of Adobe Acrobat 5.0 - 7.01. I have experience in creating interactive PDFs, embedding multimedia, web-based forms, creating presentations using PDF, advanced prepress preparation, PDF web optimization, color management, and using PDF as a soft-proofing tool. I do not have a lot of experience using Acrobat`s advanced Javascripting features, though a lot of custom functionality can be built into a PDF this way.
Experience
Past/Present clients Marsh, Inc. (http://www.marsh.com), Impel Corp (http://www.impelcorp.com), Home Properties (http://www.homeproperties.com)
Question Hi Justin,
I sell ebooks online. Do you have any ideas about protecting my pdf ebooks from people sharing them with each other? I'd like for people to have to buy their own copy. Any ideas would be appreciated!
Rob http://www.hotcbproducts.com
:)
Answer Hey Rob,
That's a tough question, and a tough solution. For widespread delivery without much backend administration, the short answer is no. Acrobat does provide various security features, but not really any that would force the reader to prevent sharing or copying the PDF file.
You could implement the use of digital signatures so that anyone trying to view the PDF would have to be given specific rights to view the PDF. The problem is that this is fairly unrealistic for large scale use because each user would have to have the full-version of Acrobat, and would have to send you their Acrobat Digital ID file before you could give them access to that ebook. You would secure a personalized PDF for that person with their Digital ID set as the only person capable of opening that file. There are of course a myriad of problems with this, such as problems with that person losing or changing their digital ID (which would prevent them from ever opening that PDF again), having Acrobat Pro ($$$), and a ton of work on your end.
Your only other option would be to set general passworded security options that can only prevent printing, editing, and content copying, not sharing. You could have the PDF set to require a password to open the document, and you could use one password for all of your PDFs (customizing it for each customer would require alot of work on your end). Of course, if a customer is sharing the file with someone else, they can just share the password too.
There may be other solutions, like using Zinio, for widespread distribution, but I don't know much about their security features or content creation requirements.
I hope this helps. Sorry there is no easy answer that I can think of. If you come up with a useful solution, please let me know.
