Embed PDF on a webpage and prevent download

Question

Is there a way to embed a PDF document on a webpage and at the same time disabling download? If possible I would prefer an html5/css3 solution. If no other way is possible I\'d

Answer 1

Short answer is, it can't be done. The only way to view a PDF document without any kind of conversion is via the adobe PDF plugin, and that invariably allows the document to be saved. On top of that, it's trivial to use various tools to get the url of the PDF and download it from there.

If you want to avoid sending the actual PDF document, you could create a server-side script that converts the PDF document to a series of PNG or JPG images behind the scenes. You can do this with ghostscript for example.

But then, the actual content of the document still reaches the user, only in a different format. If this is not satisfactory for you, there are various techniques you can use to prevent most users from saving the images, but these are easily circumvented by a sufficiently technically savvy user.