List of basic protection methods.

Content protection is important to prevent unauthorized access and distribution of materials and to ensure the security of intellectual property. Let's look at the basic steps and methods.

1. Copyright and licensing:

• Register your copyright for the materials you create for online courses.
• Use licenses that define the rights to access and use your content.

2. Learning Management Platforms (LMS):

• Use a robust LMS that provides capabilities for content restriction, user management, and activity tracking.
• Update your LMS regularly to eliminate security vulnerabilities.

3. Authentication and authorization:

• Require users to log in using unique IDs and passwords.
• Implement two-factor authentication to improve security.

4. Access restriction:

• Restrict access to content using roles and access rights.
• Use user groups for more flexible rights management.

5. Data encryption:

• Encrypt data in the platform to prevent unauthorized access.
• Ensure data protection during transmission between the server and clients.

6. Watermarks and tracing:

• Add watermarks to images and videos to track their origin.
• Use tracking systems to track who viewed or downloaded content and when.

7. Antivirus and antispam software:

• Install antivirus and antispam software on your servers to detect and prevent malicious attacks.

8. Data backup:

• Regularly back up all important data and course materials.

9. Updates and patches:

• Regularly update software and system patches to eliminate known vulnerabilities.

10. User training:

• Educate your users on how to keep their accounts and data secure.
• Provide guidance on creating strong passwords and avoiding phishing scams.

11. Implementation of DRM (Digital Rights Management):

• DRM technologies allow you to restrict access to content and set rules for its use, for example, limiting the number of devices on which you can view the material.

12. Download restrictions:

• If your content can be downloaded, provide the ability to limit downloads to authorized users only.

13. Monitoring and analysis of activity:

• Use monitoring and analysis systems to track user activity and identify suspicious behavior.

14. Content Usage Policy:

• Develop and publish a content usage policy so that users clearly understand how they are allowed to use the content and what consequences they will face if they break the rules.

15. Protection against screenshots and screen recording:

• Use technologies that can prevent screenshots and screen recordings while viewing content.

16. Limitation of access time:

• Provide access to content only for a certain period of time, for example, within a paid period.

17. Device tracking and management:

• Implement a system that can restrict access to content from certain devices or IP addresses.

18. Protection against password brute force:

• Introduce password brute force protection mechanisms to prevent unauthorized login attempts.

19. Copy and paste control:

• Limit the ability to copy and paste text or other content from your platform.

20. Response to security incidents:

• Develop a security incident response plan to quickly respond to threats and regain control of content when necessary.

21. Audience analysis:

• Analyze user activity and needs to tailor security strategies more effectively.

22. Penetration testing:

• Perform penetration testing periodically to identify vulnerabilities and improve security systems.

23. Cooperation with law enforcement agencies:

• Cooperate with law enforcement authorities to investigate serious incidents when necessary.

Protecting content online is an ongoing process and its effectiveness depends on a combination of technical and organizational security measures. Maintain up-to-date security measures and monitor activity to quickly respond to any security threats or incidents.

More detailed points

The best defense is preventing an attack!

Protecting the site

The most unpleasant scenario: the pirated site will be recognized by the robot as the primary source and will be included in the search engine index before yours.

Ways to speed up indexing:

• Manual addition in Google Search Console services.
• Setting up sitemap.xml. A file with links to all pages of the site helps robots find them faster.
• Relinking. Add 3-4 links to a new site page from existing pages.

Protecting text

• Plugins. On the site, you can disable the right mouse button or completely prohibit copying text. Plugins will help: for example, Content Copy Protection - for WordPress, SecurityCheck Pro - for Joomla.
• Links. Remember that a pirate is often lazy? It also happens that the pirate is actually a bot. Both of them can copy the text in which you prudently left links to the pages of your site.
• Marking. The ownership of the text can be emphasized by mentioning you, your company and products, as well as through a recognizable corporate style. For example, texts from the perspective of characters.
• Recording of authorship. In the case of texts, these options are suitable:
  • Analyze the originality of the text and save a link to the result.
  • Cross-posting: post links to the text on social networks.

Protecting images

• Hidden picture. When you try to copy an image, only the top layer that you specified in Photoshop will be downloaded.
• Empty file. Using the Photo Protect plugin, you can make it so that when trying to download a picture, the user will receive a blank.
• Disable right button. The same plugins that are used to protect text will help with this.
• Watermark. You can protect a picture with a watermark in Adobe Photoshop or Watermark.
• EXIF setting. The camera configures metadata with information about the photo: from shutter speed to the name of the photographer.

Protecting the video

• Branding. Shoot in front of a banner with a logo, mention yourself and your brand.
• Video track. Periodically run a ticker with your website address.
• Reliable video hosting. Choose video hosting with download protection. YouTube is a vulnerable option, but it has Content ID, a copy recognition system.

Protecting the online course

• Re-education. Sometimes authors give mini-lectures on liability for copyright infringement and how violators are monitored and punished. It’s also fashionable to say that a course simply won’t work if it’s obtained dishonestly. This is not the most reliable way. You need to understand that these words also fall into the ears of students who have paid full price. Therefore, it is better to use more effective methods.
• Stop lessons. Faced with time-consuming homework, the copy-pasting pirate may give up. And if many users have access to one account, it will not be easy for them to organize the execution of tasks.
• Closed course trajectory. A lazy pirate will be very upset if he cannot copy everything at once. For example, if your course has a closed trajectory and you can only take lessons sequentially, subject to passing previous lessons and tests.
• Certification. Only those who complete this course receive a certificate confirming their knowledge and can attach it to their resume.
• Interactivity. No screencast can take over a dialogue trainer or game. This technique is so good that you need to understand it in detail.
• Feedback. In the free part of the course and in the first lessons, explain how you organize expert feedback and what unique result is achieved through this. If you manage to implement a personalized approach, you will be more willing to purchase separate access.

Professional protection

• Deposit is the official registration of your authorship, which will be extremely important in the event of litigation. For example, Copytrust will help you with this.
• Offer agreement with students. You can contact a lawyer to draw up an agreement that describes the consequences of distributing someone else's content and invite students to accept its terms.
• Agreement with the authors. Rights to commercial use of materials must be registered in your legal entity. Unfortunately, your employee may turn out to be a pirate. It is important to regulate relationships with photographers, designers, and copywriters. This way you will protect yourself from plagiarism and information leakage. For example, an agreement has been concluded with the author of this article, according to which he alienates the rights to the material that you are reading. As well as a confidentiality agreement and an acceptance certificate for completed work.
• A complex approach. Services like InfoControl and InfoProtector offer individual protection algorithms for each project. In addition to depositing, their arsenal includes blocking screenshot programs, prohibiting copying, printing and downloading, monitoring torrents, individually labeling materials for each user, tracking IP addresses and blocking violators.

What to do if the content was stolen?

Even if you fail to protect the content, the right to it remains with you.

• Record the fact of piracy: at a minimum, take a screenshot showing the site address; at most, notarize the inspection of the page with the stolen content.
• Write a letter of complaint: to the person distributing your content, asking them to stop doing so. Take a screenshot of the correspondence.
• Contact special services: if you have documented your copyright and the fact of its violation, with this evidence you can contact the services below:
  • Hosting provider. You can find the host of the site where the stolen material is published through who.is. The hoster will check your request and the site with the stolen content will be blocked.
  • Domain registrar. He has the power to suspend the use of the domain.
  • Google. The complaint to Google is called DMCA. Consider on average 14 days. If the decision is in your favor, the copy site will be removed from the search results.
  • Yandex. You can remove a page from the index through a complaint to the hosting.
  • Administration of a social network or messenger. If your content is distributed through Instagram, Facebook or even Twitter, contact the support service with all the collected evidence.
• Go to court: the most resource-intensive step, but if you followed the tips above, you have everything you need to get your claim upheld.