Document Security Question

[vbbit]

I am working on a project that creates a document and the users can purchase the document off the site. What I am trying to accomplish is that, only the buyer of the document can view the document or print the document ONLY. The buyer cannot send the link or copy or paste, or save the document so that he/she can attach it to other people. How do I achieve that?

[rjv_rnjn]

First about the approach, you will have to use Form Authentication to verify the user and then authorize them by looking at their role subscription. So there may be a user A who has registered with your website and hence should be able to log in to the site but is not authorized to view or print a document.

About the authorization, you may want to create an access role per document and then assign each user to that role who have paid (or whatever makes them eligible) to view the document.

Second about redistribution, I do not see how you can prevent a user from downloading a document that they can view and print. If I can print something, I can as well print it as a PDF or XPS. Maybe you can use Flash or some such tool to render your documents and that might prevent the copying of text. But I guess the moment you allow people to download it, it's beyond your control and on the goodwill of user to keep it to themselves. If there is an approach to restricting that too, it would be interesting to know.

[gep13]

Hello,

You may also want to take a look at the technique that I described here:

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=683196

Using an HttpHandler for all requests, ensures that you can apply any custom security checks before releasing a file.

Hope that helps!

Gary