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CD-ROM Copy Protection Solution

P

Project Guru

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 21, 2011
9
0
Dear Colleagues,

My first post here and I also apologize if this is the wrong forum. If you know of a more appropriate forum/website please let me know.

I'm authoring a CD-ROM that contains a website with images, videos, PDFs etc... This CD-ROM (essentially a "Website on Disc") will be mass replicated and sold as part of a book.

The client would like to implement some sort of copy protection that will make it difficult for people to just copy the CD or it's contents. I have been researching this for a long time now and have learned that there are many different products out there that can "supposedly" achieve this. However, due to the sheer number, I'd like to know if anyone can recommend or share his/her experiences and thoughts on the subject. To make things even trickier, is there such a solution that will prevent copying on both Mac and PC systems?

Thanks in advance for any insight!
Regards
 
Cromulent

Cromulent

macrumors 604
Oct 2, 2006
6,802
1,096
The Land of Hope and Glory
Project Guru said:
Dear Colleagues,

My first post here and I also apologize if this is the wrong forum. If you know of a more appropriate forum/website please let me know.

I'm authoring a CD-ROM that contains a website with images, videos, PDFs etc... This CD-ROM (essentially a "Website on Disc") will be mass replicated and sold as part of a book.

The client would like to implement some sort of copy protection that will make it difficult for people to just copy the CD or it's contents. I have been researching this for a long time now and have learned that there are many different products out there that can "supposedly" achieve this. However, due to the sheer number, I'd like to know if anyone can recommend or share his/her experiences and thoughts on the subject. To make things even trickier, is there such a solution that will prevent copying on both Mac and PC systems?

Thanks in advance for any insight!
Regards
Click to expand...

Don't bother. No matter what you do both the book and the CD will be on the internet for download within a week. Just accept it and move on without wasting any extra money on a lost cause.
 
Cabbit

Cabbit

macrumors 68020
Jan 30, 2006
2,128
1
Scotland
Totally agreed its just a exercise in wasting money. They only thing that would give some soft of protection to your php/asp files if any would be something like Zend Guard to encrypt the code(But not the CSS and HTML).
 
S

studiox

macrumors regular
Aug 3, 2004
131
1
Stockholm / Sweden
There's no way to protect images/pdf's etc as they should be read by the operating system and the programs.

It's fairly easy to protect a cd when it's accessed by a written program, for example with games where the loader takes care of the copy protection.

For example when someone has opened the PDF how will you prohibit that people cut-n-paste it?

I know I was not giving you a hint here about software, just outlining the problems you might get.
 
P

Project Guru

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 21, 2011
9
0
So would it be accurate to say that if the CD-ROM was authored with Flash as an executable then it would be harder to extract individual assets (i.e., videos, images & PDFs)? But then again, what would prevent the infringer from just copying over the whole disc? Right?

Thanks to all for your replies. You guys are awesome! You have helped clear things up in my mind.

Regards.
 
alfonsog

alfonsog

Contributor
Jul 17, 2002
534
528
Cape Coral, FL
It is sold as part of a book (but not actually the entire book on the cd) and the publisher is worried about the cd being copied? Wouldn't you need the book anyway therefore it doesn't matter if the cd is copied; they have the sale regardless of the cd being copied.

If it is any kind of a popular book/cd it will be on the internet before release regardless of copy protection, but if it is a niche market you will probably be fine.
 
Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
Project Guru said:
So would it be accurate to say that if the CD-ROM was authored with Flash as an executable then it would be harder to extract individual assets (i.e., videos, images & PDFs)? But then again, what would prevent the infringer from just copying over the whole disc? Right?

Thanks to all for your replies. You guys are awesome! You have helped clear things up in my mind.

Regards.
Click to expand...

Flash is easily broken too, plenty of flash decompiler out there.
 
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