ilker wrote: > > are there any way map file protection for illegal coping?
A lot of people have been asking for a way to protect map data from being copied illegally, but no one seems to have developed a practical way to do it. There are two approaches that come to mind. One method is to encrypt the data (if that's legal in your county), and then use some MapBasic routine to decrypt is as needed. The problem there is that you need a very fast method of decryption to make this practical with MapBasic (which is slow), and then when the data are displayed they are necessarily exposed, so you need to hide all user access to the table with "Set Table..." commands. The other way is to "brand" your data by embedding secret codes in the data itself. This information is not obvious to the users, but you can use it to establish your ownership and provide a means for legal action against a data pirate. The method of hiding information is called steganography, and if you're interested in that, there's a recent 3-part article on the topic of GIS & steganography published in Directions Magazine by Bill Huber and myself at http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=189. According to Winn Schwartau, author of Cybershock, there's third technique as well used by at least one US financial institution in dealing with data pirates. When they catch someone trying to break in to their data, they send a couple of goons over to the hacker's residence to explain to him the perils of messing around with their database. They have never needed to deliver their message twice to the same hacker. -- - Bill Thoen ------------------------------------------------------------ GISnet, 1401 Walnut St., Suite C, Boulder, CO 80302 tel: 303-786-9961, fax: 303-443-4856 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.gisnet.com ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
