DRM / restricting distribution

[Sean Carte]

Does anyone know if it is possible to provide some sort of digital rights management solution to files provided by DSpace?

Alternatively, and I think this was asked some time ago, is there a way to restrict downloads of a PDF, so that it can be viewed in the browser and not downloaded.

Basically, I'm looking for ways to prevent distribution of items, but still permit viewing them.

Sean

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi Sean,

Overall, there isn't a reliable way that I'm aware of in DSpace to allow a user to view a PDF while preventing them from downloading, because the server would be providing unrestricted access to the item.  See this thread for a summary. 

As far as I know, the only way to prevent download is to set full permission restrictions on the bitstream/file for the PDF for that item (see authorization documentation). 

Otherwise in case it's useful, here are a few possibilities that might be adjacent to this use case:

• You could attempt to integrate a PDF viewer and remove the download option from it (see this thread), although that would still be superficial since it won't actually prevent anybody from getting the file from the server. A built-in PDF viewer integration is not currently available in DSpace, although there is work in progress that might be available in the next version.
• If you want to configure your site to default to viewing PDFs in browser instead of immediate download you can set webui.content_disposition_threshold = -1
• If it would help to have just an excerpt version of the document public for preview purposes, you could upload that to the item and only access restrict the full file. Suggested by Tim here.

Best,

Lia

[Sean Carte]

Thank you, Lia, that's very helpful. 

Sean

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[Michael Plate]

Hi Sean,

Am 26.06.26 um 09:28 schrieb Sean Carte:

[…]

I did this for a project outside DSpace.
We allow access to back-files of journals, books etc. not hosted by the
publisher anymore.
Consists of a Python service and an Angular UI. Encrypts every PDF with
random password and you can't copy, print and save it (we use this
excellent PDF-viewer here: https://pdfviewer.net ).

Why do I tell this ?
First, you exclude any person using a screen reader, because the pages
are images, not text (one can use text, but then Firefox can show it in
Reader mode).
Second, and important: everyone can use a smartphone and just copy the
content from the screen, incl. OCR after that :) .

So, this is more a security barrier against one-click-copy.

Michael

[Sean Carte]

Thanks, Michael. 

Sean

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