Hi,

We're hoping to publish a series of pamphlets/books in the next few months, which people will be able to buy at cost price or download free of charge in pdf format online.

The only thing I'm bothered about is unscrupulous people downloading pdfs and flogging copies. Could anybody advise re. copyright law and wording of appropriate copyright notice etc., bearing in mind that we don't mind people printing it off, but we want to avoid people producing in bulk and reselling for profit.

Any advice appreciated,

John

Well, you could put:

'Copyright. Reproduction of this publication in any form is strictly prohibited without the express permission of the authors'

or something similar.

However, unless you have lots of wonga to pursue breaches of copyright cases in the courts, it won't make a blind bit of difference, unfortunately.

I do this as a small business myself.

Whatever you produce is copyrighted automatically under UK law.

You can put the usual 'rubric' in the content - just get a new book and look at the inside cover pages. You'll see something starting with :

"All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted... '

You may also see something like "Fred Bloggs has asserted his right under the Copyright, Patents and Design Act of 1988 to be recognised as teh author of this book." - can't remember the exact wording.

However, these are, as LC points out, just words.

You can protect a PDF to stop it being printed, copied and pasted, etc. but you can still copy a file.

I've not found my market 'slipping' over the years - I think that the 'wastage' element due to rip offs is probably not significant in most cases, especially if you're selling in to a specialist market.

What you CAN do is do an occasional Google search - if someone is advertising copies of your stuff, and has posted a 'section' for people to read before buying, then you can at least spot that.

the biggest rip-off I ever suffered was when some of my stuff was 'reprinted' in India and the Soviet union in the 1980s and 1990s. And that was from books and magazine articles. Never saw a rouble.... :)

I do this as a small business myself.

Whatever you produce is copyrighted automatically under UK law.

You can put the usual 'rubric' in the content - just get a new book and look at the inside cover pages. You'll see something starting with :

"All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted... '

You may also see something like "Fred Bloggs has asserted his right under the Copyright, Patents and Design Act of 1988 to be recognised as teh author of this book." - can't remember the exact wording.

However, these are, as LC points out, just words.

You can protect a PDF to stop it being printed, copied and pasted, etc. but you can still copy a file.

I've not found my market 'slipping' over the years - I think that the 'wastage' element due to rip offs is probably not significant in most cases, especially if you're selling in to a specialist market.

What you CAN do is do an occasional Google search - if someone is advertising copies of your stuff, and has posted a 'section' for people to read before buying, then you can at least spot that.

the biggest rip-off I ever suffered was when some of my stuff was 'reprinted' in India and the Soviet union in the 1980s and 1990s. And that was from books and magazine articles. Never saw a rouble.... :)

Good advice Joe.

Even PDF files are no longer safe though, as there are software packages available for a few quid which can convert PDF files into Word or other formats.

Good advice Joe.

Even PDF files are no longer safe though, as there are software packages available for a few quid which can convert PDF files into Word or other formats.

Bugger.... :(

I used to stress this a lot then eventually just stopped stressing and looked at the sales figures.

They've stayed constant so I'm assuming that I've been lucky so far. :)

Adobe Acrobat Professional can edit PDFs and select text easily too.

Adobe Acrobat Professional can edit PDFs and select text easily too.

Even after you've secured them with passwords?

The important thing here is that the OP is happy to supply the download free-of-charge.

The best way to minimise people selling on this free information, is to publicise the free download as far and wide as possible.

You will still find your generosity abused, though.

Encryted pdfs are apparently easier to crack if you have a sample of the original, so if you're letting people downloaded pdfs, & giving them a free (copied from the original) section on the website then they're easier to crack than if you only give them a (differently worded) summary of the pdf on the site.

Mind you, they're still apparently not much of a challenge.

Even after you've secured them with passwords?
You can't edit them unless you have the password but you can still copy the text.

The important thing here is that the OP is happy to supply the download free-of-charge.

The best way to minimise people selling on this free information, is to publicise the free download as far and wide as possible.

You will still find your generosity abused, though.

Good point - the problem I found with free downloads ois that people did abuse it, as you suggest.

It's odd that once people started paying even a small amount, they seemed to value it more. No, I couldn't work out why either. :)

But yes, widespread publicity and maybe a faint watermark in teh document would help.

But yes, widespread publicity and maybe a faint watermark in teh document would help.

I'd offer 2 versions of the document, an abridged version (for free dl) and a full version (which can be paid for):).

Thanks for all the advice, it's certainly given me a lot to think about, and perhaps think twice about the free downloading.

I'm only writing some of the pamphlets/books, and volunteers are writing others, and a few are republications. To give you an example, the first are the diaries and reminiscences of a local WWI solider, edited by myself and his descendent, with a hefty introduction which I'm putting together.

The project is a community project funded by a lottery grant - free PDF downloads would be a perfect way of distributing them to the widest possible audience. Lots of such publications in the past have had limited print runs and now it is next-to-impossible to find copies, which is what we want to avoid.

I'll think we'll go for it. As has been said, it will be copyrighted anyway, and if any unscrupulous gits try to pass it off as their own work in the future, or try to make a profit out of it, we can always kick off a bit of a fuss (not least, we have a couple of lawyers amongst what is turning into a vast and very enthusiastic army of volunteers, so formal warning letters to anyone who tries to pull a fast one shouldn't be a problem).

Thanks for all your advice, and I'll certainly let you know if/when the first PDFs are ready to download.

All the best,

JT

I'd offer 2 versions of the document, an abridged version (for free dl) and a full version (which can be paid for):).

Genius. Think you might have it there - if not abridged then certainly shortened and will lower-res photos etc.

Cheers!

http://www.phparch.com/ are a magazine that started solely as PDF, so you can see what they do.

Also, if you want to have widest possible audience, and funding has been found then does it make sense to try and sell it? Could you not make the full PDF available for free and ask for those who liked the book to donate to a specific charity or something?

If that seems like a good idea then have a look at

http://creativecommons.org/

It may be of interest.