PDF Security for Large Publishers

Safeguard PDF Security can provide many benefits to large publishers including:

  Protecting ebooks, reports, magazines, etc.
  Subscription based services
  Highly configurable protection system
  Choice of server hosting arrangements


A large publisher is defined here as being anyone who is publishing one or more titles that appear daily, weekly or monthly, i.e. regular publications, and where their customers purchase subscriptions to publications that last for a period of time.  These can be financial reports, weekly or monthly magazines, product documentation and updates and documentation.

A large publisher is also an enterprise with a large book list.  If you are publishing a book list rather than periodicals or subscriptions the documentation for small publishers may be more helpful.

If you sell subscription services, our unique concept of publications ensures minimum administration overheads and enables you to effortlessly manage your customer base.  Time limited document expiry means your customers continue to pay license fees when they are due.



Working with publications and documents

Before you secure a PDF document for publication you will allocate it to a publication in the administration system.  This is to make sure that all your customers for that publication will be able to read it when they get their copy, without having any additional registration requirements.

The fact that you have allocated a document to a publication doesn't mean that only customers buying the whole publication can view it.  You can also allow customers to have one-off access to any documents that you have protected.  And you can change the access rights that they receive from those given to people who have purchased the publication.  So if you want to let them just read it for a week, you can make a one-off limitation for that, or requiring them to have to be online in order to read it at all.  These may be useful techniques where you are trying to cross-sell publications across your customer base.



Protect ebooks

If you sell ebooks, then likely you and your customer will expect that they can read it from now on.  Your customer is not going to expect to suddenly not be able to read the documents they have purchased.  So most of the time you are just going to license a customer to read your information forever.

With magazines, reports and regular publications, customers expect to be able to read any document that they were entitled to during their subscription period and to read them forever after purchase.  Like ebooks, you probably need to set the document expiry date to never so that people who have paid for a particular document can use it.

Although there are features in Safeguard PDF Security that allow you to suspend customers it's not likely that you will need to use them since most subscription services are paid for up-front.



Measure and analyze customer usage

If you need to see how your documents are being used, or need report information, then try Enterprise PDF Security.  With Enterprise you can log who viewed and/or printed your documents, when and where, and  how many times.  You can generate user, document, publication, and system activity reports (e.g. list of users that can access document X, list of expired users, documents viewed/printed over the last month and by whom).



Copyright Law

LockLizard DRM services are not configured to allow for concepts such as 'fair use' (unless you have a specific policy for allowing libraries access to your publications, perhaps) which would apply to published documents. Also, LockLizard DRM has not been configured at this stage to allow for free access once your copyright in the work ends.  Whilst we would like to be able to offer that service, it is not available at this stage and you should make appropriate arrangements to satisfy that requirement by another means.



Hosting of the Administration system

As a large publisher the choice to host the LockLizard administration system is purely down to your individual needs.

By hosting on your own server, the server is under your control.  You can choose the port numbers the Secure PDF Viewer software will communicate on and you can use your own scripts to manipulate the database (please note that LockLizard does not provide support services for your own code).  You can even configure the email message text that is sent out to your customers.  The administration system can be hosted on a server that is currently in use by other software applications or you can host it on a server on its own.

By using the LockLizard hosted administration system for the licensing of your customers you can be up and running straight away and don't have the responsibility of looking after your own server.