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Make flash drive read only with no copying

Here is the Situation. I have a 2h video of a high school play that i am editing and selling but with final cut you can only export 480 p video on dvd so i am going to sell hd digital copies on flash drives my question is can i make it so that the flash drive are read only and copy protected so it can't be distributed can i format the flahs drive insuch a way a way that prevents copying?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Apr 1, 2015 9:33 AM

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19 replies

Apr 1, 2015 10:26 AM in response to jfoppes

Welcome to the new world of selling content. As Mr. Wolsky says, once it is out in the wild, it is extremely difficult to protect your work.

What you can try to do is make the purchase so attractive that customers will choose to buy as opposed to steal.

You do this by making the purchase price low, offer a physical item for sale - DVD or Blu Ray (it is not only a copy of your content, it in itself is a "keepsake"), and also take a look at offering a protected streaming option such as:


https://vimeo.com/ondemand/startselling



MtD

Apr 1, 2015 10:31 AM in response to jfoppes

And to throw another monkey wrench into the mix, if the place where the script came from is one of the national clearinghouses that rents out scripts, copyright laws prohibit you from actually making a video of the event, and if you were caught making and selling it, you could be violating copyright laws and face fines. Just want to make sure you understand that. I've dealt with this in high school and community theater arenas.

Apr 1, 2015 4:34 PM in response to jfoppes

TYou can't make it harder. You can spend thousands and it'll be cracked in days. If you don't, I'll crack it in minutes. I mean literally minutes. Every Blu-ray video is available as a torrent before it's released. There's is nothing you can do to a video in hardware distribution to make it both available and secret. That's why Apple and others have abandoned hardware for this and gone to password protected net delivery.

Apr 1, 2015 6:54 PM in response to jfoppes

Tom is right, except that it doesn't take days to crack a copy. It can be done in seconds. Anything that can be played on a Mac can be copied directly with any screen capture software, even Quicktime X and for the audio, there's Soundflower (if using QTX.)


Your best protection:

©2015 by Production Name


and


WARNING

Any commercial use or duplication of this copyright

material without prior licensing is forbidden by federal law.

Violators may be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties.

(Title 17, United States Code, Section 501 and 506).


... and be prepared to sue... and mean it.

Apr 1, 2015 10:06 PM in response to jfoppes

jfoppes wrote:

… can i format the flahs drive insuch a way a way that prevents copying?

technicallly, to playback you have to 'copy' content (from stick/disk/whatever to device) ....


So, the harder you make it to 'copy protect' your content, the more inconvenient it gets for your paying customers!


for example, on commercial DVDs I'm 'forced' to watch minutes of promos and 'legal advice', talking to me like I'm a 1st degree suspect 😟 No fun! And: When I like to watch/listen on diff. devices. again trouble to 'rip' it (anyone remembering the first slogan for iTunes? "Rip.Mix.Burn." Holy innocence ........... LOL


Forget the few copy-cats. Convince by quality (e.g. spelling 😉 ) .

Deliver an excellent product, perhaps bundled with some 'extras' (a nice designed box, with pics/t-shirt/memorabilia/…) And, hey - who copies a school-play???? 😝

Apr 3, 2015 8:13 PM in response to jfoppes

jfoppes wrote:


this is why i don't use the apple forums very often everyone seems to have their own 2 sense but none has an answer or anything useful to say

Maybe if you are unhappy with the answers here, there is a search engine called Google, which when I searched for "Copy protect a flash drive", it returned leads such as this:

http://www.mediasupply.com/usbcopyprotection.html


Can't vouch for efficacy or value.


MtD

Make flash drive read only with no copying

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