Mark D. Lew wrote: [snip]
[snip](By the way, I've been told that it's pretty easy to crack a password-protected PDF. Perhaps that has changed, but I doubt it. Using a PDF password does not make your files safe, it only makes it a little harder to steal them.)
It's easy to break into most house door-locks, also, but they still help to keep out most people. Nothing will keep out a determined thief, passwords, door-locks, whatever. No matter what you have installed in your car for an anti-theft device, it can still be stolen in under 60 seconds.
But such devices as passwords and locks do keep the majority of people from casually stealing your material, if you so desire.
I would be looking at such things as password-protected PDF files not as sure-fire anti-theft devices, but merely as a device that would help encourage more people to pay.
Unless somebody has a better idea which will incorporate guaranteed payment along with ease of distribution and minimal expense for the distribution? That is always the crucial combination that every business is looking for.
I am setting up my own website and looking at various ways to include marketing my music (and other creations of mine) and am investigating various ways to handle the transactions. Paypal is easy for the vendor because it is very affordable the money will be transferred into my bankaccount but it requires potential customers to set up Paypal accounts, and extra step which will discourage the casual shopper. Using a shopping cart service such as Americart is easier for the shopper, but it requires the vendor to set up a merchant credit card account and it costs $249/year, so the volume of sales will have to be fairly high each year to justify (and cover) that expense. Either system will guarantee that I get paid before sending the merchandise, however.
Shareware music is the least bothersome: the customer downloads the software and then sends my a check, but the big problem is that there is no way to guarantee that they send a check, so there are huge quantities of lost revenue.
Printed out order sheets that customers mail in with a check before I send them the CD with the complete, printable files on it is a step I will probably take first while researching other on-line possibilities.
So the tighter, better guaranteed systems require higher volume of transactions to make them affordable and the systems which work for lower volume either discourage potential customers or make theft (yes it's still theft if people "forget" to register) very easy.
It is a quandary that every business without a physical storefront and a cash register has to worry about -- how to ensure transfer of money in exchange for goods. And even those WITH storefronts and cash registers have to worry about such things as how to attract customers in order to build up high enough volume to pay the bills.
This is a very enlightening discussion and very timely for me.
Thanks everybody.
--
David H. Bailey
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