Abstract: A publisher of a softcopy book includes royalty payment information either within the structured document text of the book or in a royalty payment information file which accompanies the book. To read the book from the storage disk, the user applies a special softcopy book reading program at his workstation. If the user enters a command to copy the book onto a writable storage medium such as a magnetic disk or to print a hardcopy of the book with a printer or to transmit a copy of the book over a modem, a royalty payment program intercepts the copying command and suspends the copying operations. Instead, the royalty payment program presents the user with a display of the royalty payment information stored in the book text or in a file accompanying the book. The user must select the option of paying a royalty to the publisher before the royalty payment program permits a copy of the book to be made.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for managing the display or the printing of a copyright notice or security label for a soft copy document, so as to provide appropriate security for the document as desired by its author. A special copyright notice can be displayed on the first page or predetermined pages of the document as it is displayed on a display screen. If a printer is connected to the system and commanded to print the document, a cover page will be printed which includes the copyright notice, before the rest of the document is printed. If a "Do Not Copy" label is included in the soft copy of the structured document, any printer command, write to disk command, or telecommunication command will be aborted, thereby giving effect to the author's desired restriction not to copy the document.