Copy Protection?

[tviman]

Does anyone know of a good copy protection software that can be added by me, the designer, and put on the master CD before CD replication? I know about the expensive solutions like Macrovision, but I'm looking for something that I can add myself and will discourage most people from copying. Yes I know most solutions can be worked around with a little effort, but I'd like to at least limit that somewhat for those without the know how.

Thanks,

Tviman

[Corey]

Hi. Our forum has an excellent search feature which turns up some great info on that topic , i.e. here:

Click here

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[dulux1309]

I looked into this a while back, and the results were not especially useful. Applying copy protection myself was not a viable option - too high a cost for too little performance. I spoke to the people who do my duplication and printing, and they do offer an element of copy protection at a small royalty per disk. This, however, is about as much use as everything else I had looked into. It was the best option I discovered, however.

In the end, I simply gave up. The locks are there to keep the honest people honest, after all. I don't know what kind of products you are creating that need copy protection, but consider this - Microsoft have almost unlimited resources, and they haven't solved this one yet...

[Corey]

Well said...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[dulux1309]

As a further note - Instead of trying to protect my work with expensive and fallible copy protection, I took a different approach.

I simply charged a lower yet still reasonable amount per disk so that it simply wasn't worth NOT paying for it. The end result - I moved more units and therefore more people saw my work - the knock-on business is still coming in. This worked for me, but like I said, I don't know the kind of work you are doing...

[tviman]

Yeah... I found out pretty much the same thing... you're thoughts confirm my findings. I did find a few third party solutions that did not charge a per disc royalty, but could not find any supporting information or user testimonials on them.

A lot of my releases are for people in network marketing companies, they love to copy stuff and distribute it.

I think we're heading towards delivering everything on the web for these folks and charging a monthly fee for access. Then we'll make sure the files can't be downloaded.

All that to ask... does Media Studio or another Indigo Rose product let you design skins for video and other media content to be delivered on the web?

Thanks

[Corey]

No, AMS doesn't create web content...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[Sneeze]

maby try this

http://www.webtoolmaster.com/wtmcdprotect/download.htm

hope this helps

[Agent Jones]

This WTM CD Protect seems nice...

In other words, I'm developing an Activation System (but in AMS 4, which I'll try to convert to AMS 5 and it's in Portuguese so I'll have to translate). It works very simple: you get a free hosting service, host a few text files and the Internet Activation gets to work. If you have direct contact to the people you sell your products, there is also the "Multimedia Activation", made by a CD-RW, Diskette (sorry if it's bad spelled ) or other re-writable hardware.

The system requires some manual maintenance, as it was supposed to interact with MySQL databases, something I didn't manage to... So, it gets the serial number corresponding text file, sends a report to your e-mail, saying the name of the person who activated the product and, basing in the text file, the number of times that person can still activate.

As for the executable protection, it aint very strong. The first one is to convert the *.exe file into another file called "gamefunctions.dll", so that people cannot execute it. The new protection is based on a password-protected hidden zip file. I was trying to add some anti-debugger features, like checking running processes and kill things like the famous debuggers.

Obviously, this protection can be bypassed, but everything can isn't it?



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[Sneeze]

if i understand exactly what you want...
then you better you try this...
http://www.webtoolmaster.com/exes_e.htm

WTM CD Protect is a simple but useful for copyprotecting but not to protect exe-files.

i never tested exe-stealth so i cant say how it works normaly or especialy with ams.

[Agent Jones]

Originally posted by Sneeze
if i understand exactly what you want...
then you better you try this...
http://www.webtoolmaster.com/exes_e.htm

WTM CD Protect is a simple but useful for copyprotecting but not to protect exe-files.

i never tested exe-stealth so i cant say how it works normaly or especialy with ams.

I believe that software is created not for licensing but for anti-hacking (no reverse-engineering). That would be very usefull to integrate in my Activation System though.