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General Discussion

Posted by Cody McClintock
Cody McClintock
9,391 Points

Creating a custom DRM web application

Hi Treehouse,

I am currently working on a final project for school and I am looking for any kind of advice or someone that could point me in the right direction. The main goal is to prevent people from sharing this content online. I am given a 500+ page word document that will be sold online and viewed online to the user . My first attempt was converting the document to a PDF and restricting access to printing, copying and pasting, and also adding a static password but didn't realize people can just pass the content to a friend with the password. I looked up a few sites that seems to be a web application for DRM and I think that is the proper solution.

Two sites that I came across that solve this issue very well are:

[http://www.safaribooksonline.com/] [http://www.coursesmart.com/]

My question to you guys:

  1. Do you know of any sites that protect their online content similar to the two above?

  2. If I created a login system for each user online is there an easy way I can restrict the users from copying/highlighting (using javascript) and sharing the content while viewing it online?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Cody

1 Answer

Richard Crawford-Wilson
Richard Crawford-Wilson
6,094 Points
Richard Crawford-Wilson
Richard Crawford-Wilson
6,094 Points

Using javascript as a stop-gap for DRM is close to pointless, as the user could just turn javascript off.

I'd suggest using a pdf, you're always going to have the issue with people passing data around... Unless your attempting at going for a full blown enterprise solution, I don't think it's too feasible.

Is it a requirement for your school?

Cody McClintock
Cody McClintock
9,391 Points

How would I approach to build a full blown enterprise solution similar to the sites I listed above? Any ideas?