The Little Black Book of Online Business: 1001 Insider Resources Every Business Owner Needs

Chapter 18. Digital Product Security

Among Internet marketers, there's been an ongoing debate regarding digital product security.

There's no question that digital products are being copied and passed along to friends. What's even more troubling, though, is that some people will copy a product and put it on a file sharing site for anyone to download.

In fact, I recently had a client with a $2,000 digitally delivered product, and within days of his first sale, he found it on a file sharing site.

In another case, I discovered a site where the "members" decide what product they want, then they all chip in so one of them can purchase it. The purchasing member then duplicates the product and posts it online for the rest of the members to view.

You may find it interesting that this doesn't apply only to digital products—these people will take a paper-and-ink product, scan all of the pages, and post the digital copies online.

So, what's a merchant to do?

At one end of the spectrum, you have those who want to attach to every digital product the most onerous digital rights' management system they can find. Unfortunately, doing this will significantly increase your customer support requirements. I've never seen a digital antipiracy system that didn't cause some headaches for the end user.

At the other end of the spectrum are the people who don't do anything to stop the piracy, believing their time is better spent finding new marketing channels and creating new products. They consider digital ...