RE: [PHP] Genus who came up with "Self Destruct Code" & "Copy Pro tection"

I suspect the occasional copy for someone's personal use is not as troublesome as the guy who is distributing and/or selling lots of copies that represents lost sales to you. The guy who uses a bootleg copy for personal use, probably would not have bought the software in the first place, but may be tempted later to buy his own copy to get the benefit of an upgrade, particularly if he has become dependent on it (almost like trialware). For controlling copies, you might consider a license server (developed in PHP, of course). Most firewalls will allow http (port 80) traffic through to the internet. Somewhere in your app (perhaps as part of logon or admin functions), have your application contact a hidden page in your personal site, and quickly post information about the site using your code, perhaps taken from data used to display company name in the application. If connection fails, don't hang up the application (since connections are sometimes unreliable), but use the captured information to identify unauthorized copies. If you assign each legitimate copy of your application a unique code, and that code is part of the captured information, you may be able to identify (keep in mind this is not fool proof) where the copy came from. I haven't tried this, but may someday soon. I understand Microsoft has considered a similar approach, but don't know if they actually used it. Warren Vail Tools, Metrics & Quality Processes (415) 667-7814 Pager (877) 774-9891 215 Fremont 02-658 -----Original Message----- From: Udo Giacomozzi [mailto:udonews@nova-sys.net] Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 1:39 AM To: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: RE: [PHP] Genus who came up with "Self Destruct Code" & "Copy Pro tection" solja@gci.net (Jason Soza) wrote in news:90f358e63a.8e63a90f35@snowy.gci.net: > Bottom line: written/signed money for services contracts, all the time, > will save your butt! But what if you sell a product and you want to keep control of the copies? How can contracts help you if you don't even know who actually uses the product and how many copies of it? For example, think you made a great bulletin board system and sell it to ISP's or webdesign companies. How can you control on how much sites it is really used? Udo -- Udo Giacomozzi - udonews@nova-sys.net www.nova-sys.net - www.guweb.com The disadvantage of intelligence is that one is constantly obliged to go on learning. Posted by ELKNews 1.0.4-B Empower your News Reader! http://www.atozedsoftware.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php