getting paid

[Ivers, Doug E]

I'm still trying to figure out how to protect my time investment.  Don't get me wrong, I love the shareware idea, but the reality is that few users get around to paying.  This is the scenario I want to guard against:  a paying customer downloads my standalone & data stacks and enters the correct password (which does not unlock the scripts but allows use of the stacks).  Then he/she sends the unlocked copy to all his/her friends who never pay.  Or worse -- someone puts the unlocked copy on their web site.

I'm considering 3 possibilities:  1) generate a password based on when the standalone file was created on the user's hard drive.  2) generate a password based on the full path to the standalone.  3) create a preferences file somewhere else on the hard drive which stores the encrypted password.

Regarding #1, I haven't found a Rev command to access the creation date, but this seems to be the best method of the 3.  Regarding #2, if the user changes a folder name or hierarchy, then they would need to re-register to get a new password.  Of course, I'd like to avoid this both for their sake and for mine.  #3 is very easy to discover and defeat (the preferences file can be sent along with the stack to other users).  Perhaps it could be a hidden file, but I don't like it when apps create extraneous files on my hard drive, so I don't want to do that to other folks.

Needing advice,

-- D