copy protection for cd rom

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how can i write a c# program to copy protect a file....???

Posted 16-Jan-13 0:23am

prajwal rao

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CHill60 16-Jan-13 6:59am

Stopping a file from being copied is nigh on impossible, especially as you imply it will be on a cd-rom. Even if you install some security software on autorun onto the CD it can be circumvented.
Why do you want to stop the file from being copied? Could you encrypt the file in some way so that it is meaningless without your software to view it for example

prajwal rao 16-Jan-13 7:04am

sir i had written code for burning files to cd.. and now i want to protect it from copying....???

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OriginalGriff · Answer 1 · 2013-01-16T01:07:00

Solution 1

Copy protection is a thorny subject at the best of times.

You can't "copy protect a file" on any media, especially not on a CD where no information can be written to indicate it has been read. Think about it: a copy operation is a read, followed by a write to a different location. If you can't indicate that the file has already been read, you can't tell the difference between a legitimate read operation on the file, and read for copy operation.

Protecting the CD is difficult, and generally useless as most copy protected CD can be copied as an ISO image by the various "backup" tools out there.

You are much better off looking at protecting your users access by online methods in much the same way as MS does - a key value which has to be verified on line - by even then if the product is used enough, the hackers will easily circumvent it. Look at the big companies out there: Adobe Photoshop is expensive, and they spend a lot protecting it, but the "cracked" version is frequently available on torrent sites the same day the product is officially released...

Unless you have a mass-market product with a very high value, it generally isn't worth using any form of copy protection that takes you more than a day - because you will not loose that amount in revenue anyway, and will likely annoy the heck out of your legitimate users should it ever go wrong.

Posted 16-Jan-13 1:07am

OriginalGriff

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prajwal rao 16-Jan-13 7:19am

sir if anyone tries to copy then in programming by adding extra bit cant we sole that problem..???

OriginalGriff 16-Jan-13 7:24am

Adding an extra bit to what? It's a CD - it's a write-once media, you can't change it once it is finished. And if you could, the user could just write it back again...

prajwal rao 16-Jan-13 23:53pm

if a file has some 30000 bites, and if we divide them into 8 equal parts and writing them in 8 blocks..... and cant we create a program such that if anyone tries to copy that cd rom... those data should be altered...??

OriginalGriff 17-Jan-13 3:46am

No! :laugh:
If you can read them to use the file, then anyone else can read them in the same way - the hardware of the CD reader does not get told "This is prajwal's program, read the data ok" - it just gets "Read sector 123, frames 17 to 92" and hands back the data. There are various ways to make it difficult to copy a CD (such as deliberate bad sectors and framing errors and so forth) but most of the CD copying programs cope with them pretty easily nowadays.

A couple of questions for you: How much piracy are you expecting? How much are you selling your app for, and at what profit margin? How much does your time cost? How many would-be pirate will buy your product if they can't steal it?

I don't expect you to answer that, but think about it: if your time is worth $10 an hour, and your profit on sales is $10 per unit, then you need to successfully convert one pirate into a customer for each hour you spend on this...without annoying any existing customers. It doesn't take very much effort before it costs more to add anti-piracy than you get back from it, unless you are talking about mass market and 100,000+ unit sales. And if you reach that level, then the "good" pirates will get interested and prove how their "skillz" is "madder" than yours by uploading the cracked version to torrent sites the same day you release it!

prajwal rao 17-Jan-13 4:53am

well sir i don't want to sold any product....:) am just keen in learning all those things.... and just to pass my vacation am doing all those things...:)

OriginalGriff 17-Jan-13 5:00am

In which case, don't waste your time on it! :laugh:
It's a minefield, which is pretty much irrelevant nowadays when download delivery of applications has almost completely superceded physical media.

Find some other topic to look at: Databases in C#, perhaps, or audio / video integration perhaps?

prajwal rao 17-Jan-13 5:10am

ya sure sir thank you......:)