# Protecting CD/DVD from COPYING/PRINTING



## psycho (Oct 3, 2009)

OK hello everyone.My dad is a photographer and he ussualy photographs weddings and here is the thing.People often come and they want a CD with pictures from those weddings...But those people started copying them and selling for low price!
I was wondering is it able to make some shell scripts(or other language) which would protect files on cd/dvd from copying to another cd/dvd and to computer and if it is possible from printing.

NOTIFICATION: This doesn't need to be some ultra professional program because people buying these CD's are oridinary pc users who know only to turn on/off pc xD

And if this is possible it has to work for windows !?!?


----------



## dennylin93 (Oct 3, 2009)

I don't think this is possible. Images are usually in the JPEG format, which has no restrictions I know of. And even if you did come up with a shell script, someone would find a work around sooner or later. Also, it wouldn't work on Windows. Vice versa as well.


----------



## Beastie (Oct 3, 2009)

psycho said:
			
		

> People often come and they want a CD with pictures from those weddings...But those people started copying them and selling for low price!


Can't he simply print some copyright notice in the middle of every photo, just like some online galleries do?
It can easily be done with the annotate tool of graphics/ImageMagick and automated with perl.
I think this would be pretty annoying for the people who bought the copies.


----------



## Oko (Oct 4, 2009)

psycho said:
			
		

> OK hello everyone.My dad is a photographer and he ussualy photographs weddings and here is the thing.People often come and they want a CD with pictures from those weddings...But those people started copying them and selling for low price!
> I was wondering is it able to make some shell scripts(or other language) which would protect files on cd/dvd from copying to another cd/dvd and to computer and if it is possible from printing.
> 
> NOTIFICATION: This doesn't need to be some ultra professional program because people buying these CD's are oridinary pc users who know only to turn on/off pc xD
> ...



Let me be the first one to break the news for you. DRM doesn't work from the pure mathematics and computer science point of view and is absolutely unenforceable. In the very near future all human knowledge, art, and any other content will be freely available to everyone. The holders of the copy rights will get reimbursed by ISP or shell I say people who control infrastructure i.e. optical fibers. For example if ISP charges the $50 fee for internet services and you downloaded three movies from Warner Brothers they will get 15 cent or something like that from your ISP for the content they provided. 

The best advice for your Dad is to lower the prices and put people who are providing "pirated" copies out of business.


----------

