Hi, I have a program I made for my class at the school where I teach. It is aimed to accompany a book the school sells. I want to sell this software with the book, but I want to be able to copy protect it. This is for a cont. ed. dept so the general class age group is in their 30's, 40's and so on. Its for older people that are avg PC users that don't know about clonecd or much about copying outside of adaptec which is usually bundled with their machines. I want to know if there is a way to protect a cd so that basically only an experienced user of clonecd can copy it.

I was thinking to use the sheep test file Alexnoe posted and just include it with the other files as a fake or hidden file, so it would be uncopyable by regualr means, because of all the bad sectors it contains. But my software would ideally still install and work. This however, does not prevent someone from purchasing 1 cd and lending it to others in the class.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to what I can do and if my current idea is a step in the right direction for now. I mean I would love to have a system check process so people would need to run the software off the original (its a compiled exe file in C). This would prevent burrowing a friends copy.

I appreciate any advice. Thank You.

Check this site http://tzcopyprotection.cjb.net/ I think that it can make good protection

Currently CloneCD will copy it, it is basically the same protection as found on Championship Manager 2003 (dummy files which have sizes of 1-2GB! and so Nero / Adaptec refuse to copy them)

An executable encryptor which works with the above protection is also available. (Bad / Weak / Hidden sectors and a lot of other tricks are also available but are not yet used by the .exe protector)

Use the forum on the site if you have any problems

In particular - you might want to check out the 2nd page of the "bad sectors" thread in the General forum, that has a method which successfully prevented even a CCD copy attempt.

Nero copies dummy files cds easily enough. Just check the Ignore illegal toc box.

"Nero copies dummy files cds easily enough. Just check the Ignore illegal toc box."

If you know that level though you probably know about CCD, BlindWrite or Alcohol, which effectively null and voids the whole protection anyway.

Although it may seem very weak compared to commercial solutions, I was very surprised when nobody in 3 classes in my year at college was able to copy a dummy file protected game. If you use other tools as well, such as Step 4, you can prevent Nero copying the disc (Nero just refuses to read the disc) - and you have to copy the whole disc 1:1 for it to work normally.

Hey AtomicX, is it coincidence or are you one of the creators of TZ? Based on what I read, popular apps like Blindwrite, CDRWIN, and Nero can not copy TZ, but clonecd can as of this version of TZ. This sounds perfect for me. I will definitely try it.

I am indeed (but there are about 5 of us all told)

Hello xtacydima,

why do you want an (expensive) copy protection for the CD?

Wouldn't it be better to sell the book and the CD with a price that everyone of the students can afford ?

BTW: CloneCD on CD (as the Box Version) is not protected and it is not so expensiv like other burning soft. You need a special key to activate the program.

Regards, sven

Ah yes... that reminds me. You should pack your app with another packer first before using the executable protector to prevent dumping - normally this isn't a problem because most users have apps written in languages other than C (Strange, but true).

Wow I feel honered that a member of the CCD team answered me. I don't want nor can I afford an expensive copy protection scheme. What ATomicX offered is free. The book sells expensively but thats because the city college charges that much for it. I am not the publisher nor do I have any control over prices the book store charges. I don't even have any influence, they are a completely diff dept. of the school. I am having some minor problems with TZ though, but this forum is all about CCD which I have long been an avid user of. So not to jump off topic my further inquiries will be in PM to AtomicX.

Or better yet on the TZ forum on the website.

i would also like to do this. how does this dumby file work to stop people from copying stuff of of cd's I make.

These dummy files are basically where the bit on the CD which states the size of the file have been changed - so a file may appear to be 2GB+ - when software attempts to copy this, Nero / Adaptec / Roxio all complain that there is not enough space on the CD (which can only hold 650MB). If you try and copy the 2GB file to the disc, data from all over the place will be copied multiple times off the disc, until a 2GB file has been created. RAW copying programs can ignore this though. The exe protector also does a check to ensure that people do not copy onto DVDR or other formats to get around this limitation.

cool whats the easiest way to do this then?

Use TZ 1.5.5's Step 3 button - You set the file size and it applies the above protection.