Implementing DRM-Level Protection for E-books (Read-Only) and Audiobooks (Stream-Only)
Hello, this is a fantastic product! I would like to propose specific features that are currently very challenging to implement with standard WooCommerce.
We operate an online bookstore and need a secure way to sell e-books and audiobooks while protecting them from piracy.
The desired process would look like this:
- 1) E-books: Once an e-book is purchased, the text content should be immediately unlocked (unlocked text access). Critically, we need a robust protection mechanism to prevent users from copying, pasting, or downloading the text. This is essential for a full-fledged e-book sales platform where downloading the file is impossible.
- 2) Audiobooks: Similarly, when an audiobook is purchased, the content should be unlocked for streaming/listening (unlocked audio access). It must be a streaming-only solution, making it impossible for the user to download the audio file.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Independent publisher and author of over twenty years chiming in:
It's impossible to completely prohibit copy / pasting of text on a web page. There are things you can do to make it more of a pain in the ass, but those methods also inevitably degrade the user experience and may even harm accessibility.
As for streaming audio, again, there are plenty of browser extensions that will circumvent this and facilitate downloading -- there's no way to completely prevent it. However, there are a variety of WordPress plugins (most of them are premium) that enable streaming media, so you'll be able to set that up.
For a level of security on either of these things, you could put them behind a members-only gate (FluentCommunity might do the job if you want to keep it "in the family," otherwise there are lots of free and premium plugins that will do the job).
But DRM? It's a bad idea for many, many reasons.
Also, though, as an author and publisher, I'm curious about your business model. Since you're not allowing downloads of the digital media, will people have to be on the site to access the titles they've "purchased?" Quotes because it seems folks are really buying access to content, not a license to use the content (the usual deal when buying an e-book or audiobook). Or will there be some kind of app?
Not sure how this can work for ebooks. Amazon does it with their DRM that allows to copy only a certain amount of data. Bunny offers an enterprise DRM which is mainly for video "Hollywood Grade". You can check with them if that also works with audio. https://bunny.net/stream/media-cage-enterprise-multi-drm-digital-rights-management/
Hi everyone,
Perhaps adding the person's tax information, purchase email, and ID to the PDF would be helpful.
Platforms like Hotmart and Eduzz here in Brazil do this.
They add it to the document's footer.
This would be an interesting feature to implement in FluentCart.
When dealing with info products (ebooks, PDFs, etc.), allow defining what will be added.
This is the same feature FluentForms has when working with PDFs.
- Audiobooks: Similarly, when an audiobook is purchased, the content should be unlocked for streaming/listening (unlocked audio access). It must be a streaming-only solution, making it impossible for the user to download the audio file.
This part could be the platform itself and not fluentcart.
Paulo Beneton great idea! Thanks