Protecting my code

[battlesiege]

Hello Guys,

 

I've been sitting here for about an hour bashing my head against the wall as I try to come up with a solution, but whatever I think of is soon countered by a work around.

 

So I've come here, I used to use this forum when I started programming but I lost my login details

 

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A few details

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I am planning on writing a live chat client for websites and I want to sell the licenses for a few £ each. But I want a way to stop my code from being shared on the many warez sites etc.

 

So how would I go about releasing code that will only work if its licensed to the domain its being used on.

 

I gather I am going to have to get the code to send a request to my server which will check if the domain and license are registered. But whats to stop a clever(ish) user to just find this request and remove the request completely. Then I come up with the idea of the request having to be made so that some code could be run that is required for the live chat to work. But for the code to run I would have to use a php function like require() and the server would also have to have a setting enabled so could be run from remote servers which for most people is a big no no.

 

Thats enough of my rambling, if anyone know a good way to solve my problem, then will unofficially declare you a genius and lets just say I'll owe you one

 

Thanks

Simon

[teamatomic]

I wanted at one time to do that but after lots of frustration I came to the conclusions that

1. If M$ cant stop it how can I.

2. Earning a gazillion frequent flier miles while trying to smuggle an AK in my luggage would in the long run not be worth a few dollars.

 

 

HTH

Teamatomic

[battlesiege]

There are so many desktop applications and web projects which all require license and they all suffer from the same thing. But surely there must be a solution to this.

 

If there is no solution then as far as I know if you have a copyrighted you code then you can get any site taken down if they are using your unlicensed code by contacting there server provider (if they run there own server then your screwed probably). The only problem for me is I have no idea what type of copyright is required, how to get the copyright and if it costs anything.

 

Thanks for your reply Teamatomic

 

Simon

[teamatomic]

There are two types of copyright

 

1.Implied

Anything you can be legally copyrighted is so by default at the point of creation.

 

2. Actual

Anything that can be copyrighted. You print out the appropriate form from the US Copyright Office, fill it out and attach a copy(s) of the original work or the original and the derivative, pay $45(last time I did it) and mail it in, and anywhere from six weeks plus you get a certificate of copyright in the mail.

 

The difference between the two is this

 

1. Actual copyright gives you the right to statutory damages vs having to prove and recover only actual damages.

 

2. Actual copyright gives you the right to recover attorney reasonable fees associates with enforcing a copyright violation.

 

A. If requested by the accused party you must make available to them a certified copy of the certificate of copyright in a timely manner. If you dont have actual copyright you will get laughed at.

 

B. Either Actual or Implied gives you the right to send a DMCA take-down notice. But again, see item A.

 

 

HTH

Teamtomic

[jl5501]

The only way this is done is with an encryption system such as ioncube. The encrypted code can be set to only run on the one domain it is licensed for. This does of course require the purchaser to have the appropriate run-time software, but I believe you can bundle that with your code.

[battlesiege]

@teamatomic - Copyright is so much to take in. I'm from the UK, is there no way I can just go on a website and give them my code and say I want to copyright it (Or would I even need to give them code as really its the product which is being copyrighted not some code). Probably 18 months ago I spoke to some copyright agency and I didn't really understand what they were saying, but I remember 1 guy saying that copyright cost £200 for an open source project and another guy said by putting the copyright symbol on the page automatically makes my site copyrighted.

 

Also take this forum as an example it is build by SMF and its open source so I'm guessing its licensed under GPL or something similar, does SMF still need to be copyrighted, they have the copyright symbol n there own site and on there forums but I don't see the point if its open released under GPL.

 

Sorry for taking this way off topic and thanks for your help so far its much appreciated.

 

@jl5501

 

I have heard of ioncube but I have never used it, I just had a look on there site and it looks very similar to a tool which zend made, you install some zend software onto your server, put some code into you php.ini file to tell php you code is encrypted, then you encrypt you code using another piece of software and upload that to the server.

Its a nice idea, but most people don't want all the hassle of having to install different thing and I don't really want to stop people from editing my code completely, because after all there will be templates etc which the user should be allowed to edit how they like.  So thanks for the idea but I think this will likely cause more problems then it will solve

[greatstar00]

you could try this

you offer the database, storing space (i mean the chat contents storing space)

so, they only run the code, with the space at your side

so, ask them to pay, then you create a mysql user account for them

 

remote mysql is slow, but not that slow as compared to local one

[jl5501]

actually, with ioncube, you can choose to not encrypt any pages you wish to be editable. It does not have to be all encrypted.

[battlesiege]

That idea also entered my brain for a short period of time, but there is the problem of once I have 100 active live @greatstar00

 

chats, if its looking for new messages every 3 seconds (which is slow), and there are 10 people on each live chat

 

that would mean every 3 seconds my server would be getting 1000 request which is a minimum of 1000 (thats excluding new messages posted) mysql queries. I would need a dedicated server to handle that kind of load or at least a pretty decent vpn. Then my cost would be more then my revenue and that = bankruptcy.

 

Other then that

 

Thanks

 

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@jl5501

 

Ok, thats a better service then zend offers then, but there is still the issues of people not wanting it on there server, or people who use standard hosting (which is the mjority of people), who do not have permission to install software like this.