Simon Willison’s Weblog

How can I keep my website content exclusive?

16th October 2012

My answer to How can I keep my website content exclusive? on Quora

No, there isn’t—people can always copy things if they really want to, it’s part of the cost of doing business. If you were to publish a book people could always photocopy it.

If you’re selling static content, I would suggest doing it as an ebook. People expect to spend money on ebooks, and there are ways of e.g. baking the user’s email address in to a generated PDF file so that people feel more obliged not to share the ebook around (since it makes it obvious who the initial copy came from).