File sharing sites and illegal downloads

Well, I don’t know about you, but, I wouldn’t walk into a shop or supermarket and walk out with something without paying for it. I know there are some of you who will, but, I’m honestly not that type.

There are those amongst us who think nothing of uploading other peoples works to “file sharing sites” and other black hat sites. And there are those who even set up shop selling links to those files and have the bloody cheek to sell the download links too. These types are the real scum of the earth people and as I believe in Karma, I know something bad will happen to them one day. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later.

Anyway moving on. From now on all our software we produce gets encrypted and you will have to have a valid license file for it to work on your server. One licence per URL, so if you share that license, we will know about it, and you’ll have some explaining to do if you don’t want your license revoked. Software licensing has been around a long time and it does deter most of the more honest people from sharing stuff. If the larger companies can’t stop the thievery we as smaller vendors don’t stand too much of a chance, but hey! we can try.

So now we have gotten the software theft problem sorted out, how do we stop the PDF file sharers? Until now, not easily, we had the option of making each PDF password protected and requiring a password to open it. This only served to annoy customers, and didn’t stop the open password being shared. -

We had the option to master protect the pdf so that it couldn’t be copied and pasted into another document, good for protecting the content, but again no good for the file sharers.

Well, thankfully, we have just found a WordPress plugin that is just what we need. This superb WP PDF Stamper plugin allows you to dynamically stamp a PDF file with the customer’s details (e.g. name, email, address etc.) upon purchase. The stamper then sends the stamped copy of the PDF file to the customer via email. If you are wondering why it is important to stamp the PDF eBook before giving it to your customer then this page is for you.

Additionally, you can password protect the stamped PDF files with the customer’s email address and encrypt the PDF files to prevent users from being able to copy, modify or print the content of the file.

Think about it, would you share a pdf if it had your email address stamped into it? This little plugin is going to make you more sales and stop the thieves dead in their tracks.