Preventing URLs of courses from being poached

Jun 01, 2011

We're selling one-off courses (Articulate Presenter inc quizzes) to individuals. Still at startup, so majority of LMS (inc Articulate online) are too expensive or look too much like school systems.

Our courses are uploaded to an S3 server. The ACL is set for anyone to read if they know the URL of the relevant bucket.

When people buy a course, they have to loginto our site where they see a link to the bucket on the S3. That's OK but anyone who has used S3 will readily see the URL and be able to pass it on to others (bypassing the purchase process).

I'm looking for a method or plugin (for Joomla or Wordpress) that will hide the URL from the buyer.

One thought was to upload the course to the web server but I am worried about serving speed, if say 20 people decided to purchase and view simultaneously.

I don't think expiring URLs will work because the buyer/learner can return to the course for a period of time.

Any ideas?

5 Replies

Kelly Meeker

almost 13 years ago06/02/11 at 12:11 pm (UTC)

Hi Tess!

I have a possible solution for you, although it would be a slightly different approach. I work for OpenSesame, which is a marketplace for elearning courses (just like Amazon, but for elearning content!). You could add your courses to our marketplace and direct customers to purchase them there.

When a buyer purchases a course on OpenSesame, they download a .zip SCORM file. They add that file to their LMS as they would with any other content, and that file is a license file that allows the customer to stream the course live from our servers. This is how we monitor usage and ensure that customers pay for each use of the course. This is one key advantage of using OpenSesame for content distribution: the content remains securely on our servers, rather than distributing it directly to the end user.

Alternatively, although the site isn't really built for this, people can watch the course on our site (in "preview" mode) for one-off use. Let me know if I can answer any further questions!

Thanks,

Kelly

Tess Harris
Author

almost 13 years ago06/03/11 at 2:31 am (UTC)

Thanks Kelly for the suggestion.

Can individuals access the courses? Or is Open Sesame only designed for companies with their own LMS?

Tess

Phil Mayor
Hero

almost 13 years ago06/03/11 at 2:34 am (UTC)

Hi Tess

YOu can add lms functionality to joomla (http://www.joomlalms.com/buy_now/), which will give username access to your courses

you cant stop them sharing usernames, but it would give you some protection

Phil

Kelly Meeker

almost 13 years ago06/03/11 at 10:47 am (UTC)

Tess,

OpenSesame is designed for users with an LMS. However, if your customers don't have one, they can view the course in "preview" mode on OpenSesame.com.

I can set up a demo for you if you like! Drop me at email at kelly.meeker@opensesame.com if so.

Thanks,

Kelly

Tess Harris
Author

almost 13 years ago06/04/11 at 11:26 am (UTC)

Thanks Phil.

Tess

Preventing URLs of courses from being poached

5 Replies

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