Watermarking & Micropublishing
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As a kindergarten teacher and author of curricula and simple songs that make learning fun, I am not sure I am in the same league as the rest of you. But I will stick my neck out anyway and ask the question. I have been told of a simple solution that allows my workbooks, songs, and other materials to sold and distributed in PDF form to fellow teachers while still protecting my copyrights. The solution is to license my materials through a micro-publishing marketplace on the Internet. Has anyone hear of these kinds of web-sites? Apparently, as I'm told, these web-sites register buyers and puts a watermark on each item a they license from me. The service provides the licensing terms (in my case, I would want something like "for classroom use only"), collects payments for me, and keeps records of all buyers and unique watermark codes. Supposedly, the prices for the materials I publish is set by me. I believe these "intellectual property licensing web-sites" are a fairly new service on the Internet. So, I have been warned to "read the fine-print" before signing-up. I guess one has to be careful not to give up their copyrights to the specific service they sign-up with. Does anyone have any experience with such sites or thoughts on this approach? Thank you, Lisa Kathryn Lover Smilers & Kindergarteners
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  • To all who may be interested in anti-piracy systems for eBooks and PDF files, here is what I learned about SavoirSoft. It is both web-based application you can put on your own web-sites or if you don't have a web-site, it is a micro-publishing marketplace service you can use. SavoirSoft permits authors and publishers to use intellectual property licensing practices in similar ways that traditional publishers now use when they distribute soft-copies of their publications. (Think of Apples' iTunes Store for your own publishing web-site.) Apparently, when users download your publications, each PDF or ePub document gets a watermark embedded in it that is unique to each user. If a document or portions of it are found, they can be specifically traced back to the user who licensed it. Supposedly this technique significantly increases your copyright protection, which is why the music industry and big publishers use similar methods. Until now, such applications and services were only available to big companies. Their system seems like it would work for my teaching materials and curricula. However, it might not be as useful to authors who are less concerned about protecting their works and more concerned about creating awareness of their works.
  • Nils, Thank you for your reply. I have found a site called SavoirSoft that I am investigating. It is a new service and seems like something that would work for me. I will let others know the pro's and con's after my research of them is finished. Lisa