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.