| 摘要 |
<p>A system and method are provided for evaluating and purchasing digital books and other content. A user of a document server system may evaluate and purchase digital books and other content, generally referred to as electronic documents. The user may access the document server system from a client system. The document server system and client system may be in electronic communications over a network such as the Internet. The user may perform keyword searches to locate documents that include keywords of interest to the user. The user may select an electronic document for evaluation or purchase from a plurality of electronic documents accessible from the document server system. The user may select a portion of the document or the entire document for evaluation. A Garbling Program on the document server system may garble part or all of the contents of the electronic document prior to sending the electronic document to the user for evaluation. Garbling may include scrambling, masking, or removing portions of the content. Scrambling may include randomly replacing characters in textual content. Masking may include covering the content with a shaded area of essentially the same shape and size of the content. Portions of the document proximate keywords located in the document may be left ungarbled. Portions of the document that include certain pre-defined descriptive words may also be left ungarbled. The electronic document may include markup tags around content items. The garbling program may examine the markup tags enclosing one or more content items to determine whether the content items are to be garbled or not garbled. The user may choose to purchase one or more electronic documents. The user may be granted full access privileges to purchased documents, allowing the user to view the documents without garbling. Purchased electronic documents may be delivered to the user in electronic or hardcopy form.</p> |
