Studying VCD/CD-ROM Copy Protection Methods!

[Trenton_Net]

Hey guys!

I was wondering if anyone figured out how to copy protect a VCD or regular CD-ROM Disk from being duplicated? I have read about one technique which involves writing a dummy file and using a marker to black out the ISO File structure (Something like that), but I was unable to test it since the instructions were poorly written.

Other excellent methods which the moderators pointed out involves burning tracks less than 4 seconds long. I guess this can be done by making a 0.0001 second Mpeg clip.

Is there any other methods which people know of which will stop most average users from making duplicates of CDs? Currently I am developing software, and this fielded of study interests me greatly.

Thanks, I really appreciate your time and effort!

[Helpy Fairy]

You naughty boy!

la la la

If you want to protect your precious little videos, just encode them with a big thick fat watermark on the video saying "MADE BY TRENTON, COPY ME AND I BUST YO ASS!!!!!!!!." Put the watermark in the middle of the screen and in bold face red color.

I guarantee that no one will copy your videos.

Good luck selling your dvd rips.

la la la

Oh, you are welcomed!

[Trenton_Net]

*Sigh* Thanks for your comments, however please take the time to read my post more carefully. I am a software designer looking into copy protection methods in general. This includes ALL forms of copy protection.

"Putting a watermark on your video" dosn't exactly fix anything, except destroy picture (Which only marginaly helps if your doing video). Since video is not the only type of data people copy protect, I suggest you rethink your watermark comment.

Just funny side note, Why would anyone want to sell rips!? I could goto any Chinese store and get DVD Silvers of any movie for under $5 US. And yes, these are DVD quality, not rips copied to DVD.

[AntnyMD]

No one in this forum is going to discuss helping you develop copy protection techniques seriously ... unless they're a representative of Sony, Vivendi or Microsoft.

[Nelson37]

I have seen various methods discussed, none will stop a knowledgable user. Do a search as there are several threads.

There are legitimate uses for this; however if you are developing software it is far more secure to put time/usage limits, using serialized disks plus a date-keyed code number to unlock.

If you are selling a custom-made VCD, consider its copyability a value-added selling point.

[vhelp]

As brief as I can be. . .

In a world we live in today, WILL NEVER HAPPEN!! Period!

Just like there's always someone smarter than you... there's always
someone with a crack or code breaker, etc., etc.

Your puny little softwares' not worth putting on copy protection,
whatever it may be, cause someone WILL find a way to unlock it - so
to speak.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for ligitamatly owned items.
I DON'T go to movie rentals weekly, (like many people here and there
and what not) to rent movies souly to rip (steal) and make copies of
VCDs or whatever. If I'm that desporate, I'll just go out and buy
the darn movie on VHS @ $5 and encode to VCD. My movie, my VCD.
That simple. I'm not selling them, or giving them away. The only
time I give away a VHS-to-VCD disk is when I'm doing for a friend,
and the friend is upping (his/her) money for the VHS and VCD (I hand
the friend his/her VHS-and-VCD, as they paid for the VHS, when I'm finished
with the VHS-to-VCD project, cause it's there's)
I get people who ask me, oooh, do me this copy or that copy. I always say,
"give me $5 dollars" (for the VHS movie), and I'll burn you the disk, and I'll
return the VHS AND vcd to them in the end.
I've done this many times (via work, and just around the block)

I love how people say, "I just want to back up my DVD" Yeah, right! I don't
believe anybody that says they want to back up their DVD to their DVD-r media,
cause I know that the disk are very expensive, and it's sooo obvious what their
REAL intent is. The movie is either rented, belong to a friend, or the
library's or something.
Nobody (not me, anyway) goes out and buys (spends) $400 on a dvd burner,
and another $4 a disk @ 4.7g and rents a DVD movie for another $4 a night
to RIP/Convert/VCD/SVCD for nothing. You do the math. It's just plain
stupid! Nothing makes me more madder to see such posts like BACKUP... .. ..

Well, my $4 dollars worth.

-vhelp

[Trenton_Net]

No offence, but its software engineers like us who have to build all sorts of encryption, protection, dongle locking, Serial Registration, and other methods of copy protection to recover company development costs and rights. If you were working for any computer corporation like most software engineers do, you probably wouldn't be around for very long. Most of the enterprise software we work on is big business, and very confidential. The development time for server software is very heavy.

That’s why they pay developers so well. But with your “leak a copy/hack and crack” attitude, I doubt anyone would be interested in hiring you. Let alone, if you decided to do something like that, you’d probably be sued by any major corporation for intellectual property theft.

[Helpy Fairy]

ooops aye dayed it again ...

baybay baybay ...

BAYBAY!

anyone know the complete lyrics to Britney's Classic song?

BAYBAY!

[furosa]

Check oout:

http://www.caprotect.com/default.htm

It is an asian site that offers proffesional software for VCD copy protection

[mcorpse]

Also, search for TZ Copyprotection, and CDProtector 3. TZ works for VCD with a bit of fiddling. and CDProtector 3 is a really cool encrypted EXE is-it-the-real-disc method for CD-ROMs.

[vitualis]

The problem with VCDs are that no matter what you do, they must still be able to be read by an otherwise uninformed VCD player.

This makes "copy protecting" a VCD quite difficult. Dropping the filesystem on a VCD works reasonably well as it will confuse most people, but if you are determined, it can be easily overcome. Furthermore, this method probably won't work for SVCD (? filesystem needs to be read by player).

Similarly, apparent short/long tracks are easy to overcome as well.

Good luck.

Regards.