How To Add DRM For WordPress Websites
WordPress member login systems provide password protection, but member accounts and passwords can be shared, enabling many users to use a single account that may have a paid membership with special privileges to view media and online lessons.
The problems with adding DRM that can identify each user uniquely are many:
- Any customization of the WordPress member login pages and database tables are likely to be overwritten when updating WordPress version, thus losing any changes that were made.
- Identifying users by IP address is a useless concept in this instance because IP addresses are mostly assigned randomly by Internet service providers (ISP) and many uses can be using a single IP address behind a home or corporate Internet connection.
- Most web browsers are incapable of detecting anything about the user that can be used as a reliable identification. For example, normal web browsers like Chrome and Firefox cannot read the MAC address of the user’s network card or the serial number of their hard drive.
ArtistScope DRM For WordPress
ArtistScope has been the leading developer and innovator of DRM and copy protection since they invented it in 1998. Having developed many plugins for all CMS such as WordPress for many years to simplify the use of their software with online CMS editors, the ArtistScope team is most familiar with the problems involved in adding DRM to existing WordPress websites and keeping it as simple as possible for website owners who may little to no web design skills.
ArtistScope copy protection solutions for desktop reading include DRM management to prevent sharing and unauthorized distribution for all media as an option that authors can use whenever DRM is desired. But web plugins do not include DRM because of the conflicts that it can cause with the WordPress member control and the plethora of membership plugins available for WordPress.
The ArtistScope DRM Plugin For WordPress
The ArtistScope DRM plugin for WordPress has been specially designed to be independent of all existing plugins and database tables that a website may be using. The DRM solution is comprised of two parts… a WordPress plugin that installs like any other that site admins can use to nominate which pages or sections are to be DRM protected, and the admin section which is a PHP application that can either be installed on the same web site or on a remote website.
How The ArtistScope DRM Plugin Works
Site admins can select which pages are to be DRM protected by using the settings page to nominate the URL or a keyword found in their URL of pages to be protected. For example, by nominating “lesson” all web pages that include the word “lesson” will be automatically protected.
Nothing needs to be done to the protected pages as ArtistScope DRM dynamically injects the code that is required that ensures that the user is logged in and using the appropriate web browser.
Secure Web Browser Required
Popular web browsers cannot be used because they neither have the capability of identifying each user uniquely or be suitable candidates for use on copy protected web sites. Popular web browsers are in fact the common enemy of anyone wanting to protect web data because they have been designed to exploit the web content and media in every way possible.
Instead, ArtistScope DRM requires that the member uses the ArtisBrowser web browser to login before exploring DRM protected web pages. ArtisBrowser, unlike all other web browsers, has been especially designed to protect web pages and their media from all methods of copy and exploit including the extraction of data from browser cache and memory.
ArtistScope DRM : Access Rights Management
The way “access rights” work in this case is that all logged in members have permission to visit and view DRM protected web pages. Being logged in as your WordPress site member while using the ArtisBrowser displays the page and logs their usage. First time users of DRM protected web pages are automatically added to the DRM user table and their unique Computer ID is recorded. Then on subsequent visits, that Computer ID is used to validate their access rights, and if the user account is using a different computer or the computer is logged on as a different users, the web page will be protected… the user will not get to view the DRM protected page and instead be shown an error message.
All logged in users are eligible when they use ArtisBrowser, but there is more to it than that and site admins can edit and manage each user’s entitlement by assigning groups and expiration that may be useful for subscriptions and online course entitlements, etc.
ArtistScope DRM Plugin Availability
The ArtistScope DRM plugin for WordPress is freely available to anyone using ArtistScope web protection software such as the ArtistScope Site Protection System (ASPS), CopySafe PDF, CopySafe Video or CopySafe Web software.
ArtistScope DRM For Any Website
ArtistScope DRM can be added to any website. We made a plugin for WordPress because so many site owners use WordPress today. But it can also be used on any type of website, Even on Windows web servers because the site end only needs a couple of lines of code added to pages that you want to protect. However the backend, the user management and logging system, was written in PHP, so if using a Windows server it will need PHP support.