Looking for an online service to serve PDFs (no print or download)

Even in image format, someone can capture it, as long as they know a little about how the browser works (and with chrome, it's very easy to get to any element in a page no matter what sort of javascript tricks you try to use). If all you want to do is prevent them from being able to use normal text functions like search and copy/paste, you might try printing or converting to postscript (in the print menu you can choose "print as pdf" and postscript is an option).

I'm not sure why you would want to do this, though. If you don't want people to be able to copy the files, Adobe probably has ways of preventing that. I bought a PDF that required Adobe's special reader due to DRM. It interfered with my ability to use it as I expected (search functionality was broken). I complained, and will only purchase future eBooks from them because they apologized and sent me a normal pdf that worked on my desktop and an epub that I was able to load on my nook.

Check out Adobe Digital Editions. It's used by libraries to distribute ebooks which expire.

macaddict23 said:

I'm looking for a way to upload PDF articles and not have viewers download or print them. Based on my research, it's not possible because once a browser shows a PDF it's already been downloaded and a viewer can use the Print and Save command from the browser application.

Another option is to turn my PDFs into JPGs or Flash, but that requires a lot of time because my PDF library is pretty extensive.

Is there an online company that provide the service I'm looking for?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I can take your money, $70/hour or you can do it yourself. Save all of your PDF's using AdobeAcrobatPro with a password. Disable print. Disable download. Easy peasy. Or am I missing something?

User's can always screen print. You could try your hand at media queries to generate a blank page when screen printing is attempted, but that still will not prevent a truly determined person with a smart phone and a camera.

You may need to rethink your entire 'sharing' process. Could you share an excerpt for free? A couple of examples of the pdf information you have that will prove it's worth to a paid subscriber? Trickle release for non paid members? Make the text very big so that printing would become obnoxious, but easy to read on the screen ( just thought that one up after chugging a coffee, so probably best to just ignore that last one ). So many questions so little coffee.

I do it all the time to our 'office' documents.

Box.com

I would take a look at box.com. It is very similar to dropbox, except it is a little more geared toward the enterprise business. With the free account you can share file, but limit them to preview only. This will prevent them from downloading it. I have shared a file and limited it to no download below so you can see how it functions.

https://www.box.com/s/cgflqss5uqyi3nhme1xg

There is also a whole bunch of paid options that give you a ton of controls, including control over the user interface and branding of the page. It will look like your own custom cloud service,. I also just tested, and if you disable the download function for the file in box.com it take away the print the file button. And after trying to print the page I ended up with only blank pages. No PDF printed.

Here is box.com's video tour.
https://www.youtube.com/box

Hope this helps.