Digital Rights Management

DRM is an issue that must be dealt with before the collection of Storybooks can be released. My main problem is the functions of "Save" and "Save As". Not only do I want them to be blocked, but I want any effort to Save to implement an erasure of the document from both viewing and any copies that exist on the current devise, as well as access to the Subscription page. 

 I want it simply and clearly understood that no one may possess this document without authorization, or having purchased that right, and any attempt to steal this material locks the perpetrator out completely.  It is unfortunate that I must take these measures, but the people who pirate these products are also likely to make it available on-line for free and doing that will destroy the commercial viability of the product lines and thus steal the business away from the investors, creative staff, technical staff, theatre operations, merchandizing, and an array of other activities that add value to the economy and help people with jobs.

It is not that I want to control the situation, I'd rather I did not have to do that, but it is clear that society as a whole cannot be trusted to honor intellectual property and at the very least, until we recoup the large investment in creating this work, I must take measures to protect it's value, not only for myself, but for those people who have invested in this project, have yet to do so, or who are counting on participating and deriving economic benefit from it. But truthfully, it needs to be protected for the long term advantages of doing so.

At this point, I am convinced that serving the e-Storybook via a subscription page is the best approach. There are a few reasons for this. 

Firstly, a subscription page offers better overall monitoring of the product and the audience, making it easier to address numerous issues, known and unknown.

Secondly, it will make it easier to deliver the project. The size of the files makes download difficult because of the GFX. It is more practical to break the e-Storybook into scenes and to present them as such. A subscription page will make this easier, because once a person is logged in, I can utilize links to make each scene flow into the next, while keeping the buffer lower. This will also allow me to integrate movies (animation) into the e-Storybook because the movie will be a separate file (implemented via a link). 

Secondly, the e-Storybook is an evolving presentation. There are many aspects to it which are not yet finished and will take time to complete. It is clear I cannot wait until it is all complete before releasing it to people. The entire concept, including "The Gnomic Tales" is, quite simply, huge. So I imagine that a subscription page will allow the viewer to participate in the growth process. One may or may not desire to follow it's growth in this way, but I think I will need to take that chance, otherwise I'll be dead before anyone gets to see the whole thing. That's another reason for the DRM. The project is still growing and we need to control the level of access, so as to avert interference with the process by nefarious actions.

At some point, the e-Storybook will end up being a full length movie, because it was designed with that in mind. In the meanwhile, segments of the story can and will be presented as narrated video files. That is one part of DRM and the subscription page, being that they are updated as they are completed.

 The concept here is to take advantage of the way the Storybook was designed. Knowing that the story might one day become a movie, I designed the Storybook in scenes, not scenes to match the movie, but scenes that match the stage musical. But since the Storybook is intended as a companion edition to the stage play, I took the opportunity to expand upon the information contained within each scene in order to give the reader a "bonus" over the theatre goer who hasn't read the companion edition.

While doing that I had the cinema in mind. So I structured the pages in the Storybook to serve as storyboards, with embellishment that would help to develop the screenplay. That being said, some work on a screenplay will be taking place after the Storybook is locked in and ready to go to the printers (which is very close to being done). Expanding on the idea of a film;There are two basic types of films that we need to consider - Live Action and Animation. Even though I have been a filmmaker and have a degree in Cinema, I'm not very inclined to produce a live action film. I'm in for it if we build a team of producers, but I'm not going to take that on myself. I'm already swamped with what I am doing and adding that to the mix is a recipe for failure. Producing an animated film is a goal I am more inclined to pursue. The higher levels of animation that is currently occurring with CG GFX is interesting and I intend to explore it further, but I will need to graduate into that level of operation. For now, I am looking at integrating classic animation with puppetry. Doing that is within the range of my current resources and abilities, but even that is to be considered experimental and not something that can be put into a competitive marketplace. None-the-less, creating a product based on those techniques can be very useful. As it stands now, I am still building the studio facilities, equipment, and operating systems, so adding some degree of cinema/video activity using the Gnomes is appropriate for refining those elements of IMS. I am also creating a traveling exhibition to go with the opening of the stage show, so there's that.

In my mind, making the e-Storybook part of a subscription page will create some income to continue with assorted production activities, but more than that it will allow the subscriber to be part of the process and check in from time to time to see how the GFX and video animations are proceeding, because they will be integrated into the e-Storybook as we are able to include the finished visuals.  I am also thinking that the fixed illustrations will gradually be replaced by GIFs. Of course there are scenes that will in fact be videos, rather than GIFs, but all this will lead into a finished animated film.

These thoughts are presuming that I will be working from existing resources to gradually move into the full concepts of feature film products, but if circumstances change in that regard, we can easily move into a more conventional methodology, or possibly integrate the e-Storybook into the larger production activity as part of the overall presentation before the public.