Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31865
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31865
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### Apparently the following section requires emphasis! :-)

### I do not endorse this solution, I do not USE this solution, I am a semi-retired professor in computer science that is aware of this product, I met somebody that uses this product to protect their work and likes it. It is a Windows-only product, but at last report 91.8% of all laptops, desktops and non-phone computers are Windows-based. Thus it restricts your audience.

### My specialty is not security, but my informed opinion is that all security is deterrent, not certain, but that said, deterrents do indeed reduce piracy, especially when the price and/or effort and/or risk and/or learning curve required to circumvent the deterrent exceeds the price of the product.

The rest is basic computer science: If an author is **_intent_** upon protecting their work then **_some_** licensing and restrictive scheme is necessary, either to a device (disk, MAC address, dongle) or requiring an online connect to ensure only X simultaneous users at a time. The latter can be accomplished at some multi-hour checkpoint intervals, to cover spotty network availability.

The hardware type of licensing can be more invisible. Disks have unique serial numbers, network cards have unique MAC [Media Access Control] addresses, and USB dongles can be read-only devices that are difficult to hack. That said it is possible to run software that has an encrypted form of such a signature; and reads that unique signature from a device and then encrypts it, and refuses access to the encrypted content if it does not find a match. That encryption can be a one-way hash; meaning even if the user can see the hashed outcome they are supposed to match, they cannot reverse that to find the hardware signature that would hash to that.

Thus, **With no endorsement whatsoever,** but awareness of the product, see this [eBook Compiler](http://www.htmlexe.com/Home), a commercial product that costs money, but they basically can encrypt your eBook with a licensing thing like commercial games, tied to a specific computer, so it can only be read on that computer. They offer services (for a minor fee) to handle all the licensing communications for you.

The easiest way to steal your book is if someone takes photos of the screen, and then transcribes those to text (there are character recognition programs that could assist in that).

So it isn't as easy as copying a file and a cookie or whatever. The license can be tied to unique hardware on a specific computer. Software is required there. The first time the user gets it they must register and be online, that is the only time they have to be online, and the use (on that machine) can be invisible thereafter.

I don't know how easy it is to use, or how good their support is, or how the whole thing works.

### Any form of security is going to inconvenience the consumer. That said, for an author intent upon protection and willing to sacrifice some sales to protect their copyright, strong deterrents exist.

I will leave this answer up despite the negative reception: It is an actual answer to the question instead of a rebuke to the whole idea of protection, and all the negative responses seems to be from people ideologically opposed to any form of protection. But the question was not "should I try" but "How to prevent ebook piracy". This is a potential answer, with the caveat already given: Protection by its nature inconveniences and restricts legitimate customers, which may significantly reduce the number of legitimate customers.

Original score: 2