Time Limited Demo

[Alex Tweedly]

As Bob says, every scheme can be got around somehow; you just need to 
make your scheme strong enough to protect your demo.

You could do something like:

1. Make two programs - an 'installer' and the actual demo.
2. Users download the installer; the installer downloads and decrypts 
the demo.
     (NB always in one step, don't allow the demo to be downloaded by 
other means and then decrypted).

This ensures that the installer will always operate with an internet 
connection to do the download, therefore it can also do any checks you 
want it to do.

3. The installer gathers some info from the machine (say, all MAC 
addresses it can find, maybe public IP address).
4. It then uses a cgi program on the server to upload and compare these 
against a list of previous downloading machines.
5. If not found - add them to the list of machines, and proceed with the 
download.
6. If already there - give user a message saying that this appears to be 
a repeat of a previous download, and invite them to send a manual 
request for permission. If they have a good reason (and there might well 
be some cases of this), you can then remove the machine from the list 
and they can then download successfully.

It goes without saying that any info about their machine that you intend 
to gather and upload must be described in the T&C and should be as 
'non-personal' as possible (i.e. MAC address but not the machine's 
hostname or workgroup name), and for completeness I would suggest giving 
them the option of viewing the info before you upload it, and requiring 
them to give permission to proceed with the upload.

-- Alex.


On 10/01/2011 22:50, Bob Sneidar wrote:
> Only way I can think of is to put a file in some normally inaccessible place a user would not think to look that tells you the user has exceeded his allotment. There is nothing foolproof however, as we learned in High school, where if you build a better mouse trap, mother nature will build a better mouse. That is to say, all copy protection is by nature doomed to fail.
>
> Bob
>
>
> On Jan 10, 2011, at 2:21 PM, Richmond wrote:
>
>> Is there a way to implment a time-limit
>> within a Livecode standalone?
>>
>> AND . . .
>>
>> Is there a way to "poison someone's machine"
>> so that they cannot just carry on downloading
>> time-limited demos everytime one expires?
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