Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: How To Deliver a Print Magazine Online, While Avoiding Piracy?

Posted by samzenpus on from the please-don't-steal-this-magazine dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I work for a technical magazine that has been available in print for over 40 years. Moving to providing an alternative subscription available online has been hard; the electronic version is quickly pirated and easily available around the world each month. We are a small company, and our survival depends not only on advertising but on the subscription fees. Do any slashdotters have experience of delivering electronic magazines via a subscription service in a way that is cost effective and secure?"

13 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Fingerprint it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The best approach for dealing with piracy is making it easy to go after those that do it, without making it harder for everyone else. There are a number of good fingerprinting / watermarking schemes around. Try that as first approach with a readable "This copy has been bought by XXX" marker on the first or second page to make it obvious that it is a personalized copy.

    1. Re:Fingerprint it! by murdocj · · Score: 5, Interesting

      How about if you know who posted the last copy online, he doesn't get any more issues? Assuming that most people are honest (and I believe they are) makes it easy to weed out the jerks.

    2. Re:Fingerprint it! by TemperedAlchemist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nah.

      The best approach for dealing with piracy is making your content easily accessible, hassle-free (i.e., no DRM), and offered at a fair price.

    3. Re:Fingerprint it! by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is the digital age... the best method is to re-tool the publication process. As part of the subscription service, have a questionnaire to fill out that personalizes the ads. As part of the publication process, include information about the subscriber in the ad holes -- you can even customize the content to some degree (in an automated manner) based on the subscriber.

      This results in an excellent watermark, as each subscriber will have slightly different content. Just do rolling MD5 hashes, and you'll quickly figure out who's leaking the content. Then stop their subscription.

      It comes back to the old "give them something to make it worth it" model -- if you make the subscription for more than "get a dead tree magazine in digital form" and add in the ability to provide online feedback for ads and content, do things to make the customer feel connected to what you're sharing with them, and as a side benefit get excellent demographics information for your advertisers, then even if the magazine itself is pirated all over the place, people will still subscribe, as you're providing them a service that goes beyond that.

      One idea off the top of my head: have an online forum where subscribers can discuss the content -- close it off to everyone else. When you print the digital copy for the individual for the month, include the "top 5 posts in customer's chosen category" as part of the Letters sections, and maybe even a roll-up of all comments the customer left on the website since the last publication, plus responses to those by other customers. Costs virtually nothing, but would be an excellent hook and security mechanism.

  2. You can't avoid piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So just make it cheap and easy for real subscribers. If it's not worth someone's time to pirate something, they won't. Also, add something that can't be pirated, like an expert's forum, with article authors participating.

    1. Re:You can't avoid piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your problem is ill conceived, you are grudgingly moving to the web because that's what everybody's doing, but you aren't really willing to change the business model and ask for a way to keep things working like before. I have some bad news for you: the web is a completely new medium and you need to adapt or disappear - technical journals will survive for some time but they will eventually die just like the rest of the print media.

      To elaborate the parent's post: give it away for free, with a limit of free articles per device, a.k.a porous paywall. The heavy users will buy a subscription while the casual users willing to pirate but not subscribe will get the articles free contributing to your advertising revenue, which generally pays little for repeat visitors.

    2. Re:You can't avoid piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The expert's forum is an excellent idea. I often read the article comments for valuable insights beyond the article.

      This makes me think the best way is to deliver the "magazine" in a continuous flow instead of as a "monthly". On the web, monthly magazines make no sense. Publish an article every few days and link between articles such as part 1 and part 2.

      Who wants to pirate one day at a time? Who wants to have to sort and organize multi-part articles? This increases the labor for the pirates and actually gives you some labor flexibility on producing content.

    3. Re:You can't avoid piracy by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree that you are looking at the wrong numbers. Who cares how many people are reading (pirating) it? You should only care about how many people are paying for it, and work to increase that number. One thing that comes to mind is special deals with advertisers that are keyed off the individual user name. Don't have a paid account? Don't get 15% off a widget... This could also be more advertising revenue.

    4. Re:You can't avoid piracy by RelaxedTension · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This increases the labor for the pirates and actually gives you some labor flexibility on producing content.

      You clearly have not seen the tenacity that pirates are capable of. For most, it isn't about ripping someone off, it's about sharing something. Add to that a lot of people with with a lot of time on their hands, and they will work tirelessly to put those articles together, day after day, month after month.

      The other posters suggesting the value-adds mixed with free are bang on. Forums, article archives, lots of "free" stuff, and a reasonable price will potentially get you far more revenue on the net than your print editions would. Embed short videos or effects that help get the article's point across. That's tougher to include in pirated versions, and generally won't be, so you have one up one the pirated version. Use the medium to it's potential, and they will come.

      Most important, work on eyeballs for advertising revenue, not necessarily subscriptions. You have the potential ,make so much more money on the web if you have good content.

  3. DRM Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are two types of people. Type 1 will pirate. Type 2 won't. DRM doesn't stop Type 1. DRM does stop Type 2 from enjoying your product. Type 1 will discover your product and then look for a pirated copy. Type 2 will stumble across a pirated copy and then subscribe to your product.

    Your basic question is whether there are enough Type 2 people to make it worth your while to offer an electronic version. My answer is: I have no idea. I only know that as a Type 2 person myself, if I am interested in your product, it is much more valuable to me without DRM, because then I can view it in a way I like and introduce other Type 2 people to it who may also subscribe.

    1. Re:DRM Free by Ragzouken · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The simplicity is appealing, but you're just wrong. Some people will buy if they can't pirate. Some people will buy if pirating is difficult. Some people will buy if buying is easy. There are all kinds of people out there.

  4. Re:Flexpaper, CloudCrowd, or other third party too by easyTree · · Score: 5, Informative

    Agreed. I just made the mistake of buying an audiobook on audible.co.uk. Never again. They expect you to install a downloader just to get the content; plus the downloader isn't triggered from all browsers so a change of browser might be needed. Once you've actually got the content, there are device-synchronization and audible-drm-compatible-player issues. Who wants to go through all that ? Unfortunately the content wasn't available on bt so I can't resort to that as a means of making it the content accesible in a way that suits me. To add insult to injury, audible 'allow' me as a customer to burn a limited number of books to CD but... drumroll... this process has a dependency on iTunes. WTH? I suppose I should know better as it's now owned by Amazon :S

    What a great future we all have to look forwards to when any remaining audiobook-content creators still in competition with Amazon are no longer :S:S:S:S:S

    --
    Requiem for the American Dream
  5. Reason why fair pricing wins by Camael · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The best approach for dealing with piracy is making your content easily accessible, hassle-free (i.e., no DRM), and offered at a fair price.

    Let me expand on this point. There are broadly 2 kinds of pirates - those who enjoy your product and pirate for personal use (the fans), and those who pirate commercially to make money for themselves (the thieves).

    The fans are normally concerned with easy and cheap access to your product. Give it to them and most fans will not bother to pirate because it is risky (exposure to malware), often time consuming (some obscure products can be really hard to find), inconvenient (usually need to assemble from multiple sources) or require technical expertise (eg. applying cracks, rooting). A good example would be Steam which provides cheap and convenient access to games. A counter example would be Game of Thrones - If you live in Oz, you can't get it (no access) and it is expensive (requires cable subscription).

    As for the thieves, normally an obscure small technical magazine would not be of interest to them. The exception is if your product is so expensive that even your fans are willing to buy copies from pirates, making it financially worthwhile. Again, reducing your product to a fair price (by market standards) will largely solve this problem. One example is AutoCAD, which has a captive market, ridiculous monopoly pricing and a huge piracy problem.

    Since you mentioned "secure", I assume you are contemplating some form of DRM. Just be aware of its disadvantages -its usually expensive (you need to buy/licence the DRM, maintain some way of policing it, maintain customer service to handle irate buyers, have some sort of refund sceheme for customers who cannot run the DRM), it can negatively impact sales (see Sony rootkits), and if badly implemented, can actually cause lawsuits e.g. SecureROM.