[thelist] PHP Based file download system.

[Mike Migurski]

>If anyone has any suggestions other than just allowing a user to have the
>file available for X many minutes I'd love to hear them, Thanks All,

I forgot to mention another method popular with a lot of media software
companies, such as cycling74 - challenge response pairs. Each challenge (a
string of nonsense words, which are common enough not to show up in google
searches as such) has a specific desired response (more nonsense words)
which unlocks the program.

This is like a password, but it changes from use to use. A user gets a
certain number of chances (in the case of c74, 3) to install the software,
after which the user must contact the company directly to beg for another
code. I've heard these are usually granted in 'normal' cases (i.e.,
crashed HD requires reinstall, new machine replaced old one, etc.), since
the company can readily check whether the user is licensed and how many
times they've asked for codes before. It seems to work for small software
firms because their user bases are small enough to handle these calls
individually and the software is expensive to begin with.

The software can be downloaded as many times as you want, and the
copy-protection does not become an issue until you actually want to
install it on a fresh machine and use it past a demo period.

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michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
sf/ca            http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html