Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by John Salisbury -
Number of replies: 14
I have created and uploaded a power point presentation with imbedded audio into moodle.  The presentation opens in a separate window when opened by a course enrollee.  Is there any means of prevent the power point from being downloaded? The presentation is copyrighted, a fee is charged each enrollee and I am interested in protecting the presentation from being downloaded by an enrollee who then shares it will other individuals who do not pay to take the course.
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In reply to John Salisbury

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Brian b -
Look into the Articulate Presenter...you can find it at www.articulate.com

Essentially, it creates a Flash version of the Powerpoint that can be launched into a separate window. There's no possible way for someone to download it. If you get a chance, try out the trial. I think you'll be amazed at what it can do.
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In reply to Brian b

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Ratana Lim -

while it may be a little more technically challenging, but students can still do video capture and save it for later use or sharing. would video capture of flash still be consider a "downloaded" copy? 

another thought...if the flash presentation is slow enough, students can take screenshot and save the image content of the presentation for later use or sharing. is this also consider a "downloaded" copy of copyrighted material?

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In reply to John Salisbury

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Steve Hyndman -

Open it in OpenOffice and export it as a flash file.

Steve

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In reply to John Salisbury

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Carl Forde -
John, the only real difference between displaying content in a browser window and downloading it is how the browser handles it. While it is possible to make saving content more inconvenient, it can still be done. There is no effective means to prevent someone from saving web content. More generally, once something is in digital form, it can easily be copied. That's what computers do.

btw, are you sure that all of your students have power point on their machines? what if they don't? It is probably worth saving the file in flash format to be sure they can see it. OpenOffice.org can do this for free.

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In reply to Carl Forde

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Colin Price -

It was the issue of people not having Powerpoint on their machines that led to me experimenting with various ways of making the presentation available. For what it is worth the results of my experiments can be found here.

I was particularly pleased with the SCORM slideshow.

I'm not sure it will help with the original problem of stopping people downloading content though.

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In reply to Colin Price

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Wouter Baars -
Actually you could protect all of your files if you would use shockwave (not flash but director) it is a closed format and you can protect the content because the director movie can see if it is being played from a server or that it has been downloaden. And the shockwave file format is closed, unlike the flash format.

Here is another suggestion for protecting flash files:

http://www.webpronews.com/webdevelopment/webapplications/wpn-27-20050830LockingdownMacromediaFlash.html

but the best way is to go for shockwave: http://developerdispatch.com/articles/protection.html

Has anyone tried to play director files in moodle?
I would like to know as there is no director plugin (as far as i know).

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In reply to Wouter Baars

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by sachin suryavanshi -

HI,

same problem I had yesterday that I wanted to secure my video fro download plugin.

You simply convert it into SWF file and save it . and then import it via interface. and then see life is so easy.

Cheers

Sachin

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In reply to sachin suryavanshi

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Kate Pavlidou -

Hello All

One of our trainers would like to upload an existing  .ppt on our Moodle 2.1.4 but he doesn't want the students to be able to download it

PLUS

he does not want to use one of the free converters to .swf available on the web as the .ppt contains sensitive medical related information and he is not allowed to save it anywhere on the web and then import it on moodle...

Can anyone please help??

With many many thanks in advance! Kate

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In reply to Kate Pavlidou

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Not wishing to be negative but you  are going to struggle with this. Because to be honest, however he adds it, if students wanted to, they could take a screenshot of bits of it or make a screencast (video) of it.

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Yep, can't be done.

by Ray Morris -
For the browser to display anything, it must be downloaded first. Generally the first thing the browser does with anything is save it to the drive, in the cache. The most you can do is suggest that the browser may not want to ask the user where to save the file. Any bright 12 year old will save whatever they want though. All of the major online music retailers, Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Napster, etc. spent MILLIONS of dollars trying to come up with music that could be played but not readily saved. (DRM). Every major seller has given up on that idea and just sells easily portable .mp3 files. They gave up after investing millions because they found there's just no way to make it work reasonably. See also DVD. The movie studios spent millions trying to make it "impossible" to copy a DVD. On Google you can find a ripped copy of ay movie you want, often before the DVD is even officially released. We spent about a year trying to develop a solution to this as well. The best you can technically do is mark the copies so if one gets out you can figure out who did it. Other than that, provide something of value aside from just the digital file - like interaction with the instructor.
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In reply to Kate Pavlidou

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Derek Chirnside -

I believe Mary is right.  If students see it on their machine it is gettable.  Somehow.

There is supposedly secure video streaming, but as Mary said, screen captures negate this.  And there are grabbers in the forums if you know where to look.

At present, I believe there is no solution to this, apart from dedicated VC, where the mother ship broadcasts, and the satellite stations are merely players.  They they can use a cell phone camera.  smile  Nothing is secure.  I went to a Rick Wakeman concert the other night.  "No recording"  Ha!!

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Kate Pavlidou -

Sincere thanks all for your prompt replies!

Best regards, Kate

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In reply to Kate Pavlidou

Re: Preventing Download of Powerpoint Presentation in Moodle

by Ralf Hilgenstock -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators

Hi Kate,

I think there are good reasons to prevent downloading. Generally ist not possible to prevent it at the end. But its possible to make it more complicate.

An option that I offer our clients is an export to HTML. If you try it in Open Office Impress you'll get an animated show with the slides. You can zip the content folder, add it as file ressource in a course and mark the starting file as main file. Students will see all slides. You can manipulate the quality of the export that it doesn't make sense to copy the slides and to use it in other presentations.

Attached an example

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