Security to prevent printing

kachurak

OK.. here goes. I have one site that is subscriber based. The information on the site, an instructional manual is in fact a copyrighted material product. It is STRICTLY online. My customers have a 30-day money back guarantee.

Here's my question. What can I use besides a protective RIGHT click javascript to prevent someone from copying OR printing out this manual then requesting a refund?

Is there such a script that could prevent someone from printing out my manual and then requesting a refund?

Any advice, Links too, would help... thanks folks!

Matt Kachurak
www.websystemz.com

MrAlaska

Anything viewable on the clients browser is then under control of the client. There is ways you can make it difficult, many of which make it inconvenient for all you customers, but there is always a way around it. IMHO, your best bet is rely on the fact that only 10% of people will bother to ask for a refund even if they are unhappy with a product (assuming the product is not an expensive one) and live with the odds.

jshea

Not sure how much security this could add but it might help.

If you posted your manual's text in a scrollable <textarea> (or several textareas) form field, you could probably add a simple javascript to prevent copy/paste.

The only way they could get all the text would be to take screen shots of their browser at different scroll increments. However, you would need to disable (not sure if possible but I think javascript can do this as well) "View Source" somehow.

Hope this helps.

dannys

There isn't really any secure way of doing it - no matter how much javascript is used the source can always be viewed and printed. If you could disable that somehow they could use a packet sniffer (thereby getting what the browser gets - how can you protect against that?) or using a non-complient browser.

Basically if the client can see it, they've as good as got it.

johanvdw

You can create pdf-files that are not-printable. But they will be redistributable.

(btw, you can always press printscreen and print the screenshot if you really want a webpage).

dannys

The PDF security policies were cracked about a year ago, it's easy to turn them back into editable (and, therefore printable) PDFs.

johanvdw

Originally posted by dannys
The PDF security policies were cracked about a year ago, it's easy to turn them back into editable (and, therefore printable) PDFs.

Indeed, and you can recompile xpdf that way that it still prints this printprotected pdf-files. But you will always have methods to do such a things. The question should be, how do I make it the most difficult for members to copy information, and for non members, not to enter the site.