A problem that many people have when contemplating selling their original creative work over the Internet is security of that document in digital form.

I'm going to assist you in looking at the choices currently available to solve each of these concerns in this article. Not one solution is 100% fool-proof but some come very, very close. By the way, if you have been struggling with this problem for any length of time, you're not alone- it's an industry wide problem.

Also, please note that this article is focused on commercially available digital books and other digital products.

We're not talking about digital products that you may be giving away... as a bonus, premium, incentive or to demonstrate your work to generate leads and sales for other products. There are a lot of easy to implement solutions for this kind of distribution. Some of which are mentioned below. But be aware that you are still vulnerable to your freely distributed work from being copied and distributed against your knowledge and/or will as well.

=Protecting Your Original Content=

The primary concern here, in this section, is to protect your original digital copyrighted work from being copied and distributed without being compensated for it. Compensation could be cash or it could be in the form of recognition.

I relate my story of what happened to an e-book I was selling on the Internet on my web site. To make a long story short, I was selling my first e-book quite successfully when suddenly, sales stopped to a near halt. I received an email shortly thereafter informing me that my e-book's location and password had been distributed on various newsgroups and that I should check my server logs to see that it was true. I did and found that hundreds of copies of my ebook had been downloaded. My book was being stolen, and I had no indication it was happening.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had this problem - you may have had it too, whether you knew it was happening or not! I was lucky-- someone actually sent me an email and told me about it.

Others aren't so lucky. They created their original content and have been sucked dry of profits, without ever knowing what hit them.

If we want to reduce the problem to its essentials -- the real problem is NOT the file (if it's password protected) it's the PASSWORD itself -- it's ability to unlock your content. Because it's seen by the buyer it can also be copied and shared illegally.

The closest solution to perfect password protection I have ever seen offered is Perimele's Pay2See software and DRM solution. Pay2See allow you to encrypt your e-content then upload it to your server. A customer purchases the content and upon completion of payment the file is downloaded to their computer and decrypted automatically. This is the best part of this solution: The buyer never sees the password for the encrypted file, it's all done through the transaction- completely transparent to the buyer. Therefore they can never share the password with anyone- they don't know what it is!

I used it for a while on my ePublishingEtc.com site to sell content with mixed results. Some customers stated that they were charged but never received the content they ordered. Others had no problem at all. As Pay2See grows and matures it's a solution worth looking at.

Let's take a look at some other current best practices when it comes to securing a document for sale online:

1) Password protected web sites: You have original content that is only available to paid subscribers. You sell access to your password protected site. Once a username/password combination has been stolen, the thief can get in, steal your content.

Password protected sites won't protect your content if your HTML is exposed when they access your site. There are a number of Javascripts and other products that lock a user from 'right clicking' on your web page. When 'right clicking is allowed, your HTML source code may be viewed and copied. Installing the scripts will disable the 'right click' function on most browsers. Try www.javascripts.com for some good scripts.

For example, a very popular site on the net is http://www.passthison.com. A very sharp direct marketer, Sanford Wallace the developer/owner of this site, has a script the disables your ability to 'right-click' on the page and view the source code. And that may discourage some casual cyber thieves.

But anyone with a little net savvy will simply go to "View" -> "Source" on their main browser navigation bar and look at the HTML code on the page and copy it!

Unfortunately it's too easy to all but the novice web user.

2) Encrypt your HTML code: There are a few products available that will 'encrypt' your HTML code. If you're selling access to a protected directory on your site you may think about using this, especially if you're using proprietary code. It won't prevent people from stealing your visible content, because they can always highlight the text and copy it, but if you want your code protected - this is a help.

I recommend WebCrypt 200 available at Moonlight Software: http://www.moonlight-software.com/webcrypt.htm

3) Password protected web sites and e-content: You have original content that is only available to paid subscribers. You sell access to your password protected site. Your e-book or other downloadable content is in the password protected directory too- anyone who gets the password to the site can also go straight to the e-book file (http://mysite/private/e-book.exe -or whatever the name of your e-book is) and download it directly using the password for site access.

4) Password protected e-books (on a non-password protected area of your site): Any e-book that's sitting on your server or someone else's, even if it's password protected, is vulnerable. One password, one file...hackers love it. The closest thing I've seen to an inexpensive DRM e-book protection system is Sunil Tanna's Active E-book Compiler http://www.e-bookcompiler.com/.

Sunil's product allows you to enter up to 1000 different passwords per e-book. That makes the chance of your password being 'shared' very low since every time the e-book is copied or downloaded it changes the "password number". Sunil states that just giving your e-book 100 unique passwords reduces the risk of 'password sharing' to 1% or less.

The downside to this system is that it makes customer service a real headache. Every time someone orders your e-book you have to ask them to get the "Password Number" from their e-book and then look it up and send it to them. If you're planning on selling a lot of e-books, handling these requests (especially when you're looking up one password out of 1000 or even just 100) is time consuming. Not to mention that fact that you have to manually ENTER each password one-by-one into the program! Sunil said he's working on a 'bulk password' upload- I hope he does.

An added benefit, this product is very nice for graphic design or copywriting for clients.

Let's say you're designing web graphics, logos or other graphic work for a client. How do you send secure drafts or sketches for approval? Active E-Book Compiler allows you to disable the 'right click' function in the e-book compiling process and there is no "View" -> "Source" file menu in the compiled book. So your jpg's and gif's are secure from being copied using this method. You can also disable the 'print' function if you're doing any kind of writing for hire.

When I send work to a client for approval I watermark the image, put the image in a web page and then compile it using Active E-book. The compiler creates an *.EXE file that I send as an attachment to the client. You can also add a 'password' so only your client can view it. They can see it, but they can't copy it.

I recently discovered another small 'flaw' in programs like this that compile your HTML into e-books. If you open the e-book and 'bookmark' the page you're on, the entire page and graphics are stored on your hard drive as a 'temp' file. You can then access those pages and the graphics by going directly to your temp directory and pulling them out.

There are also shareware programs available that let you 'look' inside an 'EXE' file to see what components in contains-- then gives you access to those individual files.

Again, nothing is 100% fool-proof. Like I've been saying if someone really wanted to rip you off they could do what I just described or they could use a 'screen capture' device like the free one at: http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/capture.htm …and, if they had the right software and lots of patience they could clean up the image by removing the watermark one pixel at a time.

Even if you're selling a 'printed' information product there are lots of people who will tell you they got ripped-off -- just the same -- by someone who copied it (and replaced the original seller's name with their own) or scanned it and started selling the copies off their printer!

5) Adobe's Content Server2 (TM). For file locking and key distribution this is the cutting edge solution for commercial distribution of PDF documents online.

System Requirements:

· Microsoft® Windows® NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5, running Microsoft IIS 4.0
· i486™, Pentium®-based, or Pentium Pro-based personal computer (Pentium or Pentium Pro recommended)
· 40 MB of available hard-disk space
· 128 MB of available RAM
· CD-ROM drive

Cost? $5,000 for 128 bit PDF Merchant software PLUS 3% royalty payable to Adobe for each and every file sold using the system.

In terms of functionality, the Adobe Content Server can communicate with e-commerce systems on NT, UNIX or Linux. ACS itself runs on MS NT or Windows 2000 and requires SQL 7 and MS IIS.

The downside is the price, the royalties and you can ONLY use it with PDF file formats. Also, if you don't have a dedicated server you can run the software on, you may be looking at an additional expense.

6) PayPal's Web Accept. PayPal makes it easy to enter the ecommerce game. All you need is a PayPal Business Account and a product to sell. They are coming out with a 'shopping cart' which would be very useful.

The problem with using PayPal's Web Accept is that they include the 'Return URL' in the link your customer clicks. If you're selling a digital product your customer can go directly to your content download page and never pay you.

If you're selling a physically shipped product then that's not a problem.

7) ClickBank: A lot of entrepreneurs selling e-content use ClickBank, and for good reason. Their interface for credit card transactions is secure, has real-time validation and quick. They are probably the best service available for real-time cc transactions without the need for a merchant account (they're technically a 're-seller' of your digital content and use their merchant account).

The details: ClickBank has a one-time $49.95 activation fee, and a $1 + 7.5% fee per sale. There are no monthly fees. There's no 'shopping cart' function. And there's a limit on the amount they will allow you to charge. Initially you get set up for approval at $15.00. If you have some transactions and a good record with no charge-backs, they will raise it to $50. In very rare cases you can get approved up to $100- but that is their established limit.

Is there a solution that fits all?

The answer is "Yes" and "No". Just what you wanted to hear, I'm sure!

You want 100% fool-proof, safe and secure documents? Do put them on the Internet, don't share them with anyone, don't print them and don't sell them to anyone! Keep them on your hard disk, encrypt them with a program like Crypto from http://www.gregorybraun.com/ so no one will ever see them!

That's the only 100% fool-proof solution I know of! Not exactly practical for those of us who make their living on the Internet, is it?

=Options For Safely Delivering Your e-Content=

So now that we've established that there is no 100% fool proof system, let's look at a way that comes very, very close.

1) Upload your original e-content to a folder on your web site only after your client has paid for the content.

The drawback using this technique is the time involved in uploading the content every time a purchase is made. The way to get around that is uploading the content once to several different folders then rotating the URLS that you pass out to each customer. If you have a lot of products that's not much of a solution. But if you have 2-3 products it will work. If you have one product simply upload the e-content to a folder and then occasionally 'rename' it using your ftp program 'rename folder' function.

2) Deliver your e-content to your customer via email. This works only if your customer has an email account that allows file attachments or you're sending relatively small files >1MB. Be aware that a lot of email services do not allow emails over a certain limit to be delivered. If your file is 1.2MB and your customers email service doesn't allow anything over 1MB, you won't get your content delivered and, in many cases, you won't even know it! They won't tell you it can't be delivered, they will just 'kill' it. Then you get a nasty email from your customer asking where there content they purchased is.

3) Use a secure email delivery service - like the one at www.hypersend.com. The customer pays, you send the file through Hypersend (who bills themselves as the "Courier" of the Internet). The service is FREE, by the way, up to 100 transfers a month.

A nice feature of the system is that the file is encrypted on Hypersend's servers until it's ready to be 'picked up' by your customer. Also, you can tell exactly when they picked it up through a 'confirmation of delivery' feature you can view on your account page.

The downside is the you have to upload it to Hypersend (they do not permanently store an of your deliveries) each time someone buys your content and if your customer does not have the Hypersend 'agent' on their computer they have to register, download the software agent and then pick up the file they purchased. That's extra steps your customer may not like.

4) Password protect each one of your e-content files and store them securely on your server. When a customer pays, send the URL and password for that file. Simple, direct and will work in most cases. The drawback is that the customer pays then has to wait to download and get the password.

5) Password protect your e-content and let your customer download them. A simple to implement alternative to the above is to let your customers download your password protected e-content first, then send the password after they have paid. This is a better solution, since they have the content already, all they need is the password to unlock it.

The problem using this technique with PDF files is this: If you password protect a PDF file, you MUST enter the password for it EACH time you open that file. Your customer may get annoyed (I know I would) if they enter the password once, then ever time they go back to the content (that they have already purchased!) they have to find the password to open it each time thereafter. What a pain in the neck. Your customers will be emailing you years from now asking you for that password again because it was lost.

6) Packaged PDF: A variation of the above.

Here's how it works:

I create the original content, format it for online distribution using with either Adobe's PDF file format or Microsoft's Reader format.

With Adobe PDF I set the security features so no one can 'change' the document, but DO NOT set a password. Then I use WinZip's (www.winzip.com) password protection feature to 'wrap and zip' the file. Then I allow my customers to download the content they want at anytime, even without paying for it. When they are ready they can get to the web site and pay or pay on the spot.

What I like about this technique is that the customer:

- Gets the file immediately;
- Can 'open' the WinZip container and actually view the e-content sitting there just as promised;
- When they are satisfied the product is there they can pay and get the password to unlock the Zipped file;
- They don't have the problem of entering the password every time they want to open the PDF file.

To see how I do it just go to my web site at: http://epublishingetc.com/ep-2001.html. And download to your hearts content.

When designing your own do-it-yourself secure e-content delivery system you should consider your customers convenience and weigh that against your need for securing your e-content.

David Vallieres is the Pres/CEO of Total Internet Profits(TM). TIP uncovers niche markets and then equips you with the knowledge and resources you need to profit from them. Free Report at ::::: http://GoBizInfo.com/ ::::::

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