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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