HK1144844A - Computer enabled method and apparatus to inhibit content and other copying - Google Patents

Description

Computer-enabled method and apparatus for inhibiting content and other copying

Cross Reference to Related Applications

This patent application claims priority from U.S. provisional application No.61/002145 filed on 6 th 11 th 2007 with the U.S. patent and trademark office and U.S. non-provisional patent application No.12/069293 filed on 7 th 2008 with the U.S. patent and trademark office. The entire contents of those patent applications are incorporated herein by reference.

Technical Field

The prevention of copying of computer content and software (including data), and methods of cracking the same.

Background

Software and content piracy (unauthorized copying) by "hackers" or commercial entities is a major business problem worldwide. Substantial portions of software and digital contents actually purchased by consumers are illegally copied, i.e., copied regardless of copyrights of actual owners. Computer software and content typically distributed on digital media (media) is easily copied. Legal weapons directed to such illegal copying or piracy are relatively weak and difficult to implement.

Thus, the field of copy protection has been developed, which refers to techniques to prevent such copying, and not to legal relief that copyright owners may obtain. In recent years, various copy protection schemes have been developed, typically for digital data and media, and these copy protection schemes are also applied to computer software. One existing software copy protection technique includes a dongle (dongle), which is hardware containing an electronic serial number that must be inserted into a computer to run protected software. This adds substantial cost to the software publisher. Another method is bus encryption (bus encryption), an encryption code used in secure cryptosystems. Typically, this is only used in highly secure environments such as for financial transactions. Another technique is a registration key (registration key) that is used when running a computer program (software) and is needed to execute the program (software). It is also known to use code morphing (code morphing) or code obfuscation (codeobfusation) which hides the execution logic of the protected software code. Most of these copy protection schemes incur additional expense for the software vendor or additional hassle for the software user in installation and use.

A typical personal computer copy scheme (program) of the type widely available to hackers and others provides a disk image (disk image) of the file to be copied. Some of these schemes actually circumvent some known copy protection schemes. Some copy programs are intended for use in the field of gaming, while others are intended for use in the field of general purpose computer software.

In general, there is an ongoing competition between hackers or pirates who want to make illegal/unauthorized copies of software available on the market and software vendors and content providers who want to prevent such copying by technical means. Therefore, a new copy protection method is being required.

Disclosure of Invention

Provided herein is a copy protection method and apparatus that scrambles (fuses) currently available personal computer software (and other content) copy packages by using unexpected ("illegal") special characters in the volume (or directory) name of the software or other content or data being copied. This method can be used alone or with a wide range of other known copy protection techniques (e.g., RipGuard available from Macrovision). A method and apparatus for defeating the obfuscation method is also provided, thereby allowing such copy-protected software to be copied.

Drawings

FIG. 1 shows a set of volume names for the Windows operating system.

Fig. 2 shows a volume name with special characters.

Fig. 3 shows the volume names of fig. 2.

Fig. 4 shows the representation of fig. 3 with the special character removed.

Detailed Description

Copy protection method

The present disclosure is directed to a way of modifying the authoring (production) of copyrighted content (including software and other data) on an optical disc or other computer storage medium such that special characters are included in the associated volume name in order to thwart attempts to make unauthorized copies using general purpose computer replication products. A "volume" in computer science conventionally refers to a single accessible storage (memory) area having a single file system typically residing on a single partition of a hard disk drive. Volumes are also referred to as logical drives. Both Windows and UNIX type operating systems use volumes.

An Apple Macintosh operating system such as MAC OS X Leopard also uses volumes, just like Linux (a UNIX-type operating system).

A common practice used in creating volume names is to use one or more standard ASCII characters or keyboard characters that are recognized and accepted by the operating systems and application software of various cross-platform computing products. Many applications used in making unauthorized copies of copy-protected content use the volume name of the content to establish a directory and/or file name on the hard drive of the computer being used to make the copy. Thus, while the characters used in the volume name may not be critical to the access or playback of the original content (such as stored on an optical disc), it may be critical in attempting to make a copy of the content.

By inserting certain "unrecognizable" characters, "illegal filename" characters, or non-standard keyboard characters into a volume name, it has been discovered that some existing software applications and/or operating systems will fail in their attempts to create a file or directory having the volume name. This results in mid-stream failures and unsuccessful attempts to make unauthorized copies. Each operating system specification specifies which are related characters (also referred to herein as special characters).

Presented herein is an example of changing the volume name of an optical disc storage device (in a Windows environment). Fig. 1 shows several lattice volumes in a conventional "screen shot", wherein one conventional volume name is "MVSN TEST". The method will insert, modify, replace or replace one or more special characters in the volume name, as shown in the example of fig. 2: "MVSN TEST …". In this example, the special character added is the horizontal ellipsis "…," which is placed at the end of the volume name. The ASCII character code 133 of the symbol may be used by some word processing programs to generate the character. More specifically, in this example, the character is generated via a standard PC (personal computer) keyboard using Alt plus the "0133" shortcut key method from a numeric PC keypad. While most Windows operating system file naming conventions will accept this particular character, it has been found that this character prevents copying attempts by several currently available copy applications (programs).

There are several other special characters that can be used, such as the "illegal filename character" that is prohibited by most Windows operating systems: \/: ? "< > |". By judiciously adding these and/or other ASCII characters and/or ANSI extended ASCII characters and/or non-standard keyboard characters, a volume name can be used that will provide protection against unauthorized copying while not adversely affecting playback or use of the original content of the volume.

For MAC OS X Leoprard, the unrecognizable, illegal or non-standard keyboard filename characters are forward slash (/), NUL (which marks the end of the name), and colon (: this). For UNIX types, including the Linux operating system, such characters are forward slashes (/) and NUL (or NIL) as directory delimiters.

Avoidance method (circumvision method)

A complementary "cracking" method or circumvention technique is also disclosed herein to allow copying of content or other data residing on an optical disc or storage medium (typically in the form of one or more computer files), copy protected by the use of "unrecognizable", "illegal filename", or non-standard keyboard characters in the volume name as described above, such that the copy protected content may be successfully copied to a hard disk drive or other recordable medium. Typically, in the united states, this copyright enforcement technique is illegal under the digital millennium copyright act (DMAC); thus, the present description is not intended to advocate, support, or recommend use of the technology.

A first example of such a method of creating unauthorized copies from files that have previously been copy protected as described above is to create a new generic (and operating system specification compliant) volume or directory name (e.g., MVSN _ Test or any generic volume or directory name) on a hard disk drive or other storage medium and process the associated file into the new directory or volume, giving the new volume or directory a qualified name (conforming name) and whose contents are a copy of the contents of the protected file.

A second example of such a method of creating unauthorized copies is to create a new user-defined and qualified volume or DIRECTORY name (e.g., MY _ direct or any common name) on the hard drive or any storage media and similarly process the associated files into the new DIRECTORY or volume.

A third example of such a method of creating unauthorized copies is to check character by character any "unrecognizable", "illegal filename", or non-standard keyboard characters in a copy protected volume or directory name and create a new volume or directory having the same content and similar names but without those "unrecognizable" characters or "illegal filename" characters in the new qualified name and process the associated file into the new volume or directory.

A fourth example of such a method of creating unauthorized copies is to check for "unrecognizable" characters or "illegal filenames" or non-standard keyboard characters character by character in a copy protected volume or directory name and remove those "unrecognizable" characters, illegal filename "characters or non-standard keyboard characters to produce a new qualified name and process the associated file into the new volume or directory.

As an example of a copy protected volume name of an optical disc, fig. 3 (the same as fig. 2) shows a volume name such as "MVSN TEST …". In this example, the horizontal omission symbol "…" is "unrecognizable", "illegal filename", or a non-standard keyboard character (or characters).

Fig. 4 shows the resulting modified volume name MVSN TEST without any "unrecognizable", "illegal file name" or non-standard keyboard characters in the volume name. The modification is made by, for example, one of the four example methods above. The modified volume name may also be made into a directory on a hard disk drive or any recordable medium, and its content is that of the original content.

The corresponding means for each of the above-described methods (both copy protection and its hacking) is the actual altering program (code) that performs the methods of fig. 2 and 4, respectively. Such programs are readily encoded in any convenient computer language by one of ordinary skill in the art in light of this disclosure.

The present disclosure is to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive; further modifications will be apparent to persons skilled in the art in light of this disclosure, and are intended to fall within the scope of the appended claims.

Claims (12)

1. A method of copy protecting stored content or data in a computer system environment having an operating system, comprising the acts of:

providing a volume or directory specifying a storage area in a computer storage medium, the volume or directory having a name that conforms to operating system requirements;

the name of the volume or directory is modified to include at least one character that the operating system would not properly recognize for the volume or directory name, respectively, thereby inhibiting copying of the contents of the volume or directory.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one character does not conform to file naming requirements of an operating system.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one character is ASCII or extended ASCII or non-standard keyboard characters.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the compound is selected from the group consisting of …, \\/,: a? The at least one character is selected from the group consisting of ", <, >, |, NUL, and".

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the operating system is one of a Windows-type operating system, a UNIX-type operating system, and a Macintosh-type operating system.

6. A computer readable medium storing computer code for performing the method of claim 1.

7. An circumvention method in a computer system environment to allow copying of a volume or directory of stored content or data that is copy protected, the volume or directory specifying a storage area in a computer storage medium and having a name that is copy protected by including at least one character that an operating system of the computer system does not recognize properly for the name, the circumvention method comprising acts of:

creating a volume or directory;

assigning names that respectively meet the volume or directory name requirements of the operating system to the created volume or directory; and

the contents of the copy protected volume or directory are assigned to the created directory or volume, respectively.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the created volume or directory name is user-defined.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the created volume or directory name is generic.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein any characters of the created volume or directory name that are consistent with the original volume or directory name and not recognized by the operating system are deleted or modified.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein the operating system is one of a Windows-type operating system, a UNIX-type operating system, and a Macintosh-type operating system.

12. A computer readable medium storing computer code for performing the method of claim 7.