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.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    El Warren, 27 Jun 2002 @ 8:15am

    Copy protection built into your software...

    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...

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.