How can I create my web pages Read Only for peoples?

Question

I have a website http://www.bccfalna.com/ and the contents on this site are in HINDI Language. I want to make all these pages read only for peoples so that they can not copy the content.

Since I have written some books in HINDI Language on Computer Technology and I know that there are very few Information in HINDI language on the Internet about the Computer and I.T. Technology so I want to sell my EBooks in PDF format.

To show the usefulness of the contents of my books, I have placed all the contents in TEXT format in my website, so that people can see, read and can make decision to buy the book if the book is useful for them.

Since I have placed my whole books in Content form on my site so that various search engines also can give more and more traffic to my site but I am afraid that since I have placed all my content on my site in text form, any one can copy and will not be interested to buy them as PDF Format EBOOK.

I want that people can Read the content of my site but can not be able to copy the contents in any word processor.

Is it possible?

I don't want to make image like content, because Google, Yahoo like modern search engines don't gives too much importance to image sites.

I don't want to use Flash like sites too. The reason is same. Modern Search Engines don't gives too much attention to these kinds of sites.

I want my contents in TEXT format but I want to make them READ ONLY. Is it possible? If Yes: I would like to know HOW? and if No, I would like to get the alternative type solution.

Is there someone Genius to solve this problem? Thanks.

Answer 1

You can't make it indexable to search engines and incapable of being copy & pasted... Google has to be able to copy words from your text to use in it's index. Maybe you could put snippets of the parts you want indexed in text format and put the majority in image/flash. It's not uncommon to see chapter previews on websites selling books.

Answer 2

"Read-only" means they cant modify your webpages, "readable but not copyable" is impossible by definition, and makes about as much sense as "I want to give someone some water, but I dont want it to be wet". So, to answer your question, no this is not possible at all. (I regularly have to deal with people who think that this (and others) law of physics/mathematics doesn't apply to them, so sorry if I sound a bit rude.)
On a practical level, if you only give them some of the information, then they will only be able to copy that part of the information. (If they buy the book, they will be able to copy the rest from there.)

Answer 3

Generally speaking, any web content that is readable by a search engine will also be readable and copyable by people visiting your page.

I suppose you could examine the user_agent in the HTTP request to determine whether it originated from a popular search engine or not; if it did, return the plain-text of your content; if it did not, return a raster image of your content (text in an image can't be selected for copying and pasting, but it could be OCR'd or otherwise printed by the user). Some websites will use a script to disable right-clicking to save an image (but such scripts can easily be circumvented). Some sites will place a transparent image over the image containing the content (but this, too, can be circumvented). Note that the user_agent can be falsified if the web surfer knows you're treating search engines specially.

I suggest the best approach, though, is to keep things simple. Only publish the first chapter of your book and a table of contents online, or else only publish the first page of each chapter, or something similar. Search engines do not need the complete text of your book, only representative samples. Nobody will go to the trouble of copy/pasting your text if they can only get to a portion of the complete book.

Answer 4

Try Google Books:

I don't know if it works with the HINDI Language (It works. Some examples: http://www.scribd.com/doc/15257971/Google-Hindi-Books)

This solution allows Google to index and everyone to read the whole content. Anyhow copying remains awkward.

http://books.google.com/googlebooks/tour/

Answer 5

As others here have said, what you are asking is not possible.

If you host content for people to view in a browser, and for Google to index, there is absolutely no way to stop anyone from copying it. It is possible to make copying the content difficult (or at least inconvenient), but there's no way to stop someone from copying it if that's what they really want to do.

The only alternative, as others have already said, is to only post the first chapter of the book, and allow your readers to make a judgement based on that chapter. If they like the chapter they'll buy the whole book. This is a pretty common practice.

I understand that posting only part of the content is not what you want, but if you want to make it impossible to copy the whole book then this is your only real option.

The other alternative is to not worry about it. Cory Doctorow (and others I'm sure) publishes all his books under a Creative Commons license. They are free to download from his website but he still manages to make money from selling actual books. If people like your work enough, they'll pay to have it in a nice format.