Preventing piracy of CD contents

[PTdoctor]

Anyone know a way to prevent piracy. I sell a disc with video and PDF documents that I want to lock to the CD-R so it cannot be copied. Any suggestions?

[condone]

here's the way I look at it (and the reality of things), if it's on a CD/DVD disk, it can be pirated, no matter what. Digital sources have many ways of being copied. The only way to prevent piracyis to not create something in the first place. Analog sources can be copied very easily, but the quality of them leads to an inferior product, meaning many people would not want to copy them, thats about the only way.

[HillJack]

Unless your video is a propriatary format (not your standard MPG or AVI or MOV for example) and requires its own special software to play it, you can't. Same with PDF's.

The only way I can think of doing it is encapsulating all the data into some sort of archive (like a .cab file or, in the case of Quake 3, a .pk3 which is just a ZIP) and have it encrypted. Then, write some software that knows the key to open the file(s). But, with enough work, the software could be cracked and any key(s) will be revealed.

Basically, if it can be read/viewed, it can be copied, so your pretty much SOL imo.

[stuart49]

If Sony cannot prevent their cd's from being copied what chance do you have,there are programs like Winlock which will stop the average person with a cd writer copying (even with clone cd) ........so give them a try...

[OJ Simspon]

Sorry, but there will always be a way and a person with nothing better to do than to hack a program and distribute it to the world for free . There are many people who will willingly buy a cd but there isn't a person in the world who doesn't love freebies. If Microsoft can't stop its software from getting bootlegged than no one can.

[sean madison]

well, i always wondered this too cuz it would be nice, but u gotta think about it though.

LEts say u are selling it to a friend. If he isnt as smart in pcs, he wouldnt be able to crack it or get the knowledge too.

Not only that, if u use a rare program to do such, no crack sites would have a crack for it cuz it wouldnt be that popular.

Now, it would be nice to make a cd like the bleem cd key. OR, if u really wanna encrypt it for copying, get a dvd burner-

X box games cannot be copied unless u have a dvd burner to do it.

Here's an idea, dont know if this would work, i may sound a little crazy though thinkin bout this-

There are progs out there that will make your own trials of ANYTHING and also have options of limitations.

Since u have a video and pdf, it must be for pc use only in which case, get a prog like this, put the vid and all pdfs in this trial session and make it playable or accessible for like 10 days then functionality decreases. Like, u wont be able to play the vid no more, or cant read the pdfs no more.

[OJ Simspon]

Its possible to use DVD discs for writing your program. But the bump is still the fact that DVD's are still able to be copied. Also if its a PC program as far as i know if you don't have a DVD-ROM then you can't read the disc.