It never occurred to me that PDFs would be a digital medium ripe for pirating. But hey, everybody is stealing music and software, right?

I spotted a torrent last night of a very popular RSS book, in PDF form. I chatted with the author about it… stealing digital books isn’t something either of us have thought much about. It irritates me to know that the torrent is robbing him of royalties.

<insert rant about people who steal from somebody’s livelihood. />

Having not thought much about digital rights management (DRM) for PDF files, I did a little poking around…

• It would seem that the built-in security measures for PDF are easily cracked.
• One company, DocuRights, has addressed the problem by having a PDF prompt you to pay when it is opened. The site has a demonstration so you see how it works (using a fake credit card number). The downside for their system is you have to use them as the file host.
• FileOpen WebPublisher has a similar approach, but you can host the files and authentication app on your own server. Their site has lots of HTML errors, however, so I don’t know if the company is still viable.
• One wonders how many copies of O’Reilly Short Cuts out there were actually purchased.

(This concludes the age-old debate, at least in my book: ninjas are better than pirates after all. They don’t steal stuff, they just kill people.)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 21:10 and is filed under syndication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.