Re: Intellectual Property Protection

Geoff wrote:
> I have been tasked with finding a means of recognizing when one of
> our copyrighted works is being copied.

You will never win. The copiers will use a different OS.

> It seems to me that what I should do is hook the keyboard, and buffer
> what is being typed, and compare it to a database of copyrighted works.
> When we detect that someone is copying our work, we disable the
> keyboard -- except for BACKSPACE. And DELETE. And
> LEFT-ARROW.

What about the mouse? Most people use drag'n'drop.

> In order to prevent people from making illegal printouts of our
> copyrighted works, it seems to me what I should do is hook the
> CreateDC() function, and forward all requests to the original driver,
> except DrvTextOut(). When what is being printed matches something
> in our database, we disable the printer.

Clever, what if Little Jonny wants to include some of your content in
his school project? You'll just generate a ton of calls to the support
line and bad reviews in the press.

> If we can also detect that the content is being displayed on two monitors
> at the same time

No, because the cloning could be done at the electrical level on the
VGA line or TV out.

> In order to prevent people from making illegal copies, an upper-filter
> on top of all the drive-stacks would be in order. All WRITE IRPs are
> scanned and compared to the database, and if we detect that someone
> is copying our work, we disable the disk drive.

Disable the disk drive and completely *** up the filing system in mid
write?

> Actually, that is probably going a little too far.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

> Periodically we can make an internet connection to our server and
> make sure all their licenses are in order.

Completely normal, but make this clear up front, or the non-Internet
connected will be calling for a refund.

> Ideally, we would deploy this on all computers, but intially we are
> targetting only Windows computers.

Take a leaf out of Microsoft's book - nothing stops you copying the XP
or Office disks. It's the installing when they check up on the
permissions.

Tim.

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