(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick




New Copy Protection Scheme Planned

from the it-just-gets-better-and-better dept

The latest copy protection plan comes from a company that believes tricking everyone involved is the best way to stop content piracy. They're focused on preventing software piracy, but I could see this same model being applied to other types of content as well. The plan is that when someone makes a copy, they have no idea that there's any copy protection installed. The copy comes out just fine. They pass the copy on to someone else, who uses the content without any hitch... for a certain period of time. After a few days or a few uses, or whatever the original content owner decided, the software pops up a "buy now" button. If the person doesn't buy, then their copy suddenly stops working. It's basically the typical shareware/limited time trial model - except that no one knows you have a limited time until that time is up.

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

    Jun 27th, 2002 @ 8:15am
  • Copy protection built into your software...

    by El Warren

    No doubt that this was a motivating factor behind Microsoft including cd-burning in their recent release of WinXP. When they control the cd-burning software they can easily rollout updates that will institute their own copy protection policies...

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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