Comment Download logs? was Re:We call it... (Score 1) 369
Sounds like for this non-profit that maybe the simplest ways of doing this will get you the farthest.
If they just need numbers to cite, then use the download logs as a start. Then if you believe that the files are often shared (rather than downloaded by each person), you ask people to send a simple email to you with the number of people they are sharing it with and/or have a place on website where they can use a form to do the same if they don't want to email you for risk of spam.
If you explain why you want them to do this (so the non-profit can continue to show its board how much things are used), many people will comply since it is in their best interest to do this so the non-profit can stay in business. Of course tell them you don't intend to try and sell them anything and you won't spam them.
Another approach is to provide your information on the web (HTML), that way people typically will read it right off the site and if they share it, they will typically send a link rather than trying to figure out how to package all the pages and images up. So simple web logs become an instant way to see how often your information is being read.
I'd suggest against doing anything more complicated, especially DRM-like, you're just going to make your users unhappy and introduce all sorts of other issues. Take some reasonable simple approach to tracking (like with logs) and trust that they will do the right thing.
If they just need numbers to cite, then use the download logs as a start. Then if you believe that the files are often shared (rather than downloaded by each person), you ask people to send a simple email to you with the number of people they are sharing it with and/or have a place on website where they can use a form to do the same if they don't want to email you for risk of spam.
If you explain why you want them to do this (so the non-profit can continue to show its board how much things are used), many people will comply since it is in their best interest to do this so the non-profit can stay in business. Of course tell them you don't intend to try and sell them anything and you won't spam them.
Another approach is to provide your information on the web (HTML), that way people typically will read it right off the site and if they share it, they will typically send a link rather than trying to figure out how to package all the pages and images up. So simple web logs become an instant way to see how often your information is being read.
I'd suggest against doing anything more complicated, especially DRM-like, you're just going to make your users unhappy and introduce all sorts of other issues. Take some reasonable simple approach to tracking (like with logs) and trust that they will do the right thing.
