Training course copy protection

Protecting digital Training courses against piracy

The pressure is on for training course providers to maximize revenues from and minimize costs of delivery.  That means training goes digital.  But going digital is often associated with loss of revenue since whole courses can be easily copied and made freely available on the Internet.

The demand for training courses increases by the day.  Manufacturers have to give training courses supporting their products, many jobs now require continuing training for compliance with regulation (financial services just as much as electricians and medical staff).  And there are still traditional training courses such as proposal writing, sales management, security management and so on to be delivered.

Training organizations invest significant sums of money and intellectual expertise creating compelling material to support their brand and demonstrate their knowledge and skill.  Traditionally they have been reliant on expert instructors taking physical copies of all the documentation out on-site, including copies for issue to students, and an uncontrolled copy of the presentations.  Sometimes student copies have to be sent ahead by post or courier so the students are up to speed when the instructor arrives, and that adds to costs, especially if the copies ‘do not arrive’ and have to be sent again.

Advantages of going digital and training course copy protection

Going digital has significant financial benefits.  But it also potentially exposes companies to significant losses.  Failure to take adequate steps to protect their digital property can prove expensive.  Finding high quality copies of your documents for free download from Torrent sites can result in loss of a an  income stream for a significant period of time.

So how can you increase your training course revenue yet still protect your IPR?  The answer is a DRM solution from Locklizard.  Our customers find they are able to implement a broad range of measures to resist theft of their IPR and know-how.  And this is very valuable.

Training courses are not just one document.  But each document may have different rights.  The Locklizard concept of publications allows you to group together all the documents for a course, each having its own rights.  The course slides may be available to read but not to print for a month around the timing of the course, but course notes can be printed for separate use at any time, or may even be actual PDF documents where they can make their own notes and references.

Some courses have to be given at locations where there is no Internet availability so everything must be able to be used offline rather than restricted to online.  This can also apply where the Internet service is intermittent or poor – many remote locations do have Internet but not at a speed that is practical for downloading content.  In this situation Locklizard enables training course providers to publish courses on USB sticks along with a Viewer to open and print (if required) them.  This is a significant advantage in corporate environments where users are not allowed to install any applications – they can just click on a document to view it.

And some course providers may need to issue course materials for use on several different tablet and PC environments to allow different devices to be used in the classroom than for home study, where a desktop may be better for handling hi-res graphics and complex pages.

DRM Protection to prevent training course piracy

The Locklizard Safeguard series of DRM applications play to the requirements of the training organization, whether external or internal:

• Courses can be locked to specific locations (i.e. country and office location) so they cannot be taken on a laptop and used elsewhere.  This way users can be prevented from using materials that might conflict with copyright – e.g. trademark may not be owned by the same organization in every company in the world.
• Multiple materials that make up a course can be protected to a publication with different access rights by document, and users given access to the publication to make document management and administration simpler.
• Screen grabber protection can be enabled to prevent users taking screen shots of courses from both local and remote computers.
• Courses can be set to expire after a certain period of time (days or a fixed date), a number of views, or prints.  By not specifying a fixed date users can start training courses at different dates yet still get the same length of use (e.g. 30 days).
• Courses can be instantly revoked at any stage and replaced with updated material.
• Dynamic watermarks can be applied that display user credentials and a date/time stamp to discourage photographs being taken of the screen or photocopies made of printouts.
• Document use can be audited so you can determine who has viewed what – handy for making sure users have taken remote courses, or that courses have been successfully delivered.
• Courses can be viewed in a browser (zero installation), from a USB stick (zero installation), or locked to individual devices.

DRM piracy protection

So in order to protect digital training courses against piracy, you must ensure that only authorized users can open your courses and cannot save or duplicate them in an unprotected format.  A DRM solution however has to be practical and flexible in delivering courses to users, and that is exactly what Locklizard offers.

More information on training course copy protection features can be found at secure training courses.

To stop unauthorized copying of your training courses, take a free 15 day trial of our PDF DRM software.