Securing an e-book download

[sugarrae]

Ok, there have been many topics on securing your e-book (general opinion seems to be pdf's aren't secure and to use an e-book software)... then I hear from others in the e-book field that if people really want to steal something, they will (much like with websites) and to go with the pdf. Ah, decisions, decisions.

My more pertinent question at this point is securing the download area. i.e. If you sell your e-book through an affiliate program such as clickbank, they send the visitor to your thank you page after the purchase, where you should direct the user to download the product. Question becomes, how do you prevent users from simply sending that link to everyone they know.

(Please be gentle, I don't have a ton of experience with e-books)

[milanmk]

how do you prevent users from simply sending that link to everyone they know

Try putting cookies from the landing page which will authorise your CGI/PHP script to generate a random download link to your e-book which inturn is valid only for few minutes, say 10 minutes.

This is just an opinion, i have not tried it myself.