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You have a hard problem to solve. It's the "Content Protection" problem,
and it's the same problem that the record companies have, the movie studios
have, book publishers have and so on.
There are relatively few technological solutions available -- or at least
ones that will work. In fact, I and other cryptographers have written that
the real problem is probably not solvable. Subsets of the problem (like
keeping basically honest people basically honest) are more tractable.
Here are some suggestions:
Put in a paragraph in an "about the author" section explaining that
you're a starving musician, and this is how you make your living, so please
do not copy your stuff. This sounds stupid, but people I know with small
businesses doing shareware and so on claim that it works.
Make it easy for people to pay you. There are a few payment systems on
the Net, like Paypal. If you make it easy for someone to click a link and
pay, then it's more likely you'll get paid.
The hardest content to protect is content where the presentation is all
there is. Music is like that -- all there is to music is the sound. Movies
are like that -- all there is is the picture and sound. But an interactive
system with indexes and so on are harder to effectively copy, because they
can't just take a snapshot of your screen. If you have an innovative way to
teach -- which if you get a patent you do, definitionally, then you're
probably not just giving out static pages, and thus there's something to be
lost by someone who just takes screen shots.
Having said all manner of discouraging things, here's something that can
help. A company called Beatnik has some content
protection schemes for musical content. In the interest of full disclosure,
I have friends who work there, and I've done security consulting for them.
For what it's worth, one of their founders is Thomas Dolby Robertson, the
rock musician. Check out what they have.
Another thing to consider is non-technological solutions.
Copyright and patent protections are legal protections for your ideas. I've
written about them before in searchSecurity. Copyrights protect
expressions, not ideas. If you re-wrote this article in your own words, you
wouldn't be violating a copyright on it. However, copyrights give their
owners large-scale rights. For performing artists, it's interesting to know
that you have the right to control the performance of your works. The
playwright Samuel Beckett once stopped the production of one of his plays
because he disagreed with the director's view of the play. He did this with
copyright powers.
Patents come close to protecting actual ideas. Should you get a patent,
you'd have broad powers on control of your teaching tools.
However, both of these require you to police your intellectual property.
You have to find the violators yourself. There are a number of ways to do
this and little hacks you can do. For example, mapmakers frequently put
intentional mistakes or add in nonexistent things to catch people who copy
their maps. You might be able to do something similar.For more information on this topic, check out these other SearchSecurity.com resources:
Web Security Tip: Web sites and the law
Best Web Links: Copyright and Intellectual Property
Best Web Links: Securing the Internet and E-commerce
This was first published in December 2001
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