How to do DRM for ePub files? - encryption

I am going to create a mobile book store for a very specific group of people. Since ePub is just compressed HTML, it's not secure enough. Anyone can access it if I extract the files to SD card. I don't want users copy the E-books around because I sell them for money.
I can parse the file and save it to a database. But I wondered if there is standard way for managing ePub DRM?
Thanks,

Your best bet would be to use a DRM server solution. Adobe Content Server 4 is the leading system for this, used by Google Books, Barnes & Noble etc. though it can be a bit expensive to purchase a license and setup your own server. You can also use a SaaS service like EditionGuard to use it cost effectively, though you'll be using a shared environment in that case which may or may not fit your needs.

The Readium LCP DRM is on the market since 2017 and is now deployed in most countries. It is non-proprietary and does not break the accessibility of EPUB ebooks. It is replacing the obsolete Adobe DRM, step by step.
See https://www.edrlab.org/readium-lcp/ and more especially https://www.edrlab.org/readium-lcp/certified-apps-servers/ for more info.

What kind of protection you are looking for?
just watermarking because epub DRM is hard.
Password protection.
Encrypted files.
From what i know you are trying to do something which is in the area of R&D plus challeging, at one side you will need to develop content encryption engine and other side a reader which will read encrypted content, these readers should also be supported in major os and mobile plateforms.

Related

Need suggestion regarding SCORM compliant leaning solutions

We are building an m-learning solution[IOS and Android compatible] at our company. The product needs to be SCORM compliant. I would like to know whether it should be developed in-house by the developers or other paid options should be pursued? What are other ways of making our product SCORM compliant? We are not rally positive about using SCORM Engine for this due to its high cost solution to our problem here.Any suggestion/help is appreciated.
You can include SCORM within content using a number of open source options available on GitHub.
Getting SCORM in the content (free) is step 1.
Packaging, bundling and deploying is really step 2.
This typically has a close relationship to how Curriculum defines a structure of lessons, modules, units etc. Not knowing exactly how they want to organize this, I can speculate that you may just have a simple "I want to know that the student viewed the content" approach. If you get into a more rich dependency on how the student performs dictating what they see or do next, that requires a much for up front design so you can bridge the design, development, and deployment of your content.
Including SCORM Support in content -
Like mentioned if you search google for my SCOBot project or Pipwerks you'll hit the ground running.
Requires JavaScript friendly developer and some base SCORM knowledge attained thru reading. This could be outsourced.
Knowing the version of SCORM you wish to support can help. Consult the LMS to find out that info.
Far as presenting / creating content; if you are doing this from scratch you'd need a HTML/JS developer or if its more interactive your dipping into WebGL, Canvas or beyond. There are other paid services like iSpring, Captivate and others that offer content creation with SCORM Standards support. They may even take care of the packaging for you (covered below).
Packaging -
This requires a zip (CAM content aggregated model) which includes a imsmanifest.xml file to describe a one to many relationship of a TOC. Again simple is 1, many begins to allow you to group tiers and add objectives and other things increasing complexity but doable.
You can perform creating this package with XML, Zip and specification knowledge. I have a Packaging app on my site and a Mac (free) applescript which can also perform very basic packaging. I am not away of any other free options.
Deployment
Commonly performed thru FTP/FileShare by uploading these CAM (zip) packages. LMS decompresses and reads the manifest. Sometimes you can just copy the raw files up to the LMS thru a media / content server but this greatly depends on the options.

In-browser reader for Adobe Content Server

Is there an in-browser, Flash-free method to view ebooks from Adobe Content Server?
We currently offer a library of c.50k specialist ebooks via a feature-rich "ereader" web-app (HTML5/JS based with various fallbacks down to IE7).
However, management want to be able to offer "downloadable" ebooks for "mobile devices". By this they mean a file that the user can download and read offline. Adobe Content Server is fine for this (if a little expensive, and a little hated by the users, but unfortunately it's becoming an industry standard...)
OK so if we adopt ACS, making downloadable-for-offline-reading a possibility, what are the options for online reading, assuming we want to use ACS for everything and not just offline? In other words ... is there an in-browser reader for Adobe Content Server?
Flash is not a possibility as a) a lot of the users us iPads (yes for online reading too) and b) a lot of the users have to use IE7 with no Flash installed (the NHS is a major customer).
I realise I might be asking for the impossible but I thought it would be worth hearing peoples' thoughts.
Please don't advise me not to use DRM, it's not my choice and I have already advised against using it. However we are contractually obliged by our suppliers to have "a DRM solution" for offline reading.
If there was a widely-available alternative solution to Adobe Content Server I'd be interested to hear about it. I have already integrated ACS once (version 3) and don't really look forward to repeat the experience...
There are a number of reader apps which support ACS, such as Sony Reader. Your readers can use those apps (after "sideloading" your books, a process which differs from reader to reader) to read the ACS books. I don't know of any browser-based reader, but it seems to me that the apps (which exist for all major platforms) should get the job done for you. These apps all keep local copies of books and work just fine offline.

Is it possible to DRM EPub files without using any 3rd party software / services?

I am looking for a way to add DRM protection to EPub files without buying Adobe software for $6500 or using any 3rd party service. We would like to set up our own DRM server.
Scenario: I upload a hello world EPub file, and the system adds DRM to it. Is it possible?
I hear many times that this is impossible, but could someone clarify why? How exactly does Adobe DRM work and why could not I build my own DRM server?
Thanks
The problem is not building a DRM server. You can do that. The problem is that no standard ereader software or hardware will be able to handle your flavor of DRM and hence users will not be able to read your books. So you will end up having to provide a complete end-to-end environment of both DRM server AND ereader software. If you are in a position to insist that users install your ereader software this may be an option.

Serving WMV on a drupal site?

I have a WMV file that I need to host on my drupal 6.13 site (on ubuntu 9.x).
Is a there a relatively painless way to do this.
Do I need the "Video" module to do this?
Or can I just install a video player and point my WMV file to it?
My other concern is the user should be able to view this video on my site without needing to download anything, is WMV the appropriate format? I am worry about people viewing this on the mac and ios device.
Should I convert this to another format first?
Can I do all of the above with free software alone?
Thank a lot.
The de-facto standard, especially if you want to target iOS devices, is H.264: WMV is not going to cut it. Most Flash-based players (which you'll need for browsers like IE and Firefox that do not support H.264) also support H.264 video.
From a site administration standpoint, you'll need to either prevent users from uploading non H.264 video, or transcode the files once uploaded. This is not a trivial task, and you should use a contributed module for this. Video is probably the most far along in providing a turnkey video hosting solution.
There is also Kaltura, but it's a commercial service and they have historically failed to address privacy issues despite repeated warnings. There's a new maintainer in charge of the module, independent of the company, and the module may be safer to use than in the past.

Scanning attachment before uploading on the server?

I am giving to upload functionality, i want that files must be scaned on Server side, Before they uploaded and then they are are saved on that server.
Is there any free available antivirus engines to scan the attachment on the server?
Thanks
You can't exactly "scan" the file on the client. However, some manipulation is possible, determined by the client security settings.
I believe it is quite difficult as browsers implement such functionality differently (Internet Explorer could use ActiveX scripting for example).
You could try to look into that perhaps.
Regarding free antivirus, I believe Google has the answer ;)
But seriously, Avast and AVG are both providing home users with free versions of their antivirus. Since you haven't said anything about your purpose of the server, I don't know whether using the free versions is legal.
If you're willing to pay a bit for a AV solution, I can recomend NOD32. That said, I should mention that I have no experience with the server version. I use the workstation version, which is very light weight.
Sure, depending on what virus-checking software you're going to use for the scan -- for example, the commercial product metascan offers an API to integrate your programs with many different commercial anti-virus products.
Before uploading is hard; you could rather check it after upload but before making it available for download. To do so you can use online antivirus services - but it's a very timeconsuming solution, and you should certainly use a separate thread or service - or scan it yourself, using one of the many available antivirus engines (a few of them are free, but the others usually cost very few, less than $10 per year).
EDIT: the most famous (for me, at least) open source antivirus tool is ClamWin, which is released under GPL. For free (as in free beer) engines, I can only suggest to search "free antivirus engine" or the like, not because I'm lazy but because I've never used one and don't feel comfortable suggesting things I don't know.

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