How to protect Effects

Chethu wrote on 6/23/2009, 9:41 AM

Hello

We have been developing some special effects using Vegas Pro , We would like to know is there way to protect our special effects , we don't want our client to see how it has been implementd and we don't want them to modify it . is there way to protect it with password ?
We are going to share the veg file to our client.

Experts please advice.

Thx
Chethu

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Comments

farss wrote on 6/25/2009, 1:00 AM

"anyone can copyright anything THEY made"

Sorry but not so at all. If I saw a piece of wood into a 4" length and sell it as a paperweight anyone is free to do exactly the same thing.

From the Australian Copyright Council's fact sheet:

"Copyright does not protect ideas, information, styles or techniques."

Copyright exists from the moment a creative work is in a tangible form i.e. as soon as I create my Vegas project. You're saying from that moment on no one can do the exact same thing without breaching my copyright.

UltimateS is an entirely different matter. It's a creative work, it's in tangible form. No one can copy it but they can use the same techniques it uses to produce exactly the same outcome without breaching VASST's copyright. All the same though anyone can produce and sell a program that does much the same as US, in fact look at how much is the same between a number of such programs e.g. Excalibur, UltimateS, Production Assistant and Multirenderer. Each one of those works is copyright but what it does isn't.

A good example of this is Videocopilot's free After Effects tutorials and projects. There's people downloading his project files, replacing the media with their client's and charging a handsome sum for it. All perfectly legally.

Bob.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/25/2009, 5:27 AM

A good example of this is Videocopilot's free After Effects tutorials and projects. There's people downloading his project files, replacing the media with their client's and charging a handsome sum for it. All perfectly legally.

which sounds like exactly what the thread starter wants to do. Like I said, he can put a license attached to it that's almost identical to the Vegas license & it's all legit, his customers can't just hand it out.

I never said noone can do the same thing, I said anyone can do the same thing as long as they don't steal his projects.

Chethu wrote on 6/25/2009, 8:43 AM

Copyright is the least protection in this well connected world.
Having password protection or some other protection to our resource(Veg file etc) is better way. Other wise it is going to be very difficult to track.
That is why Sony Vegas trials , other commercial softwares expires after some period.

Thx

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/25/2009, 9:37 AM

but those aren't the same as a veg file. Back in the late 90's/early '00's Maya for SGI had a huge licensing scheme to reduce piracy of their expensive program. The solution around it: license it for 1 year @ ~1/15th to 1/30th the cost, then EVERY year completely erase your SGI machine, reset the date one year back & resinstall everything. Let you use a highly guarded program for free.

Copyright is pretty much the only legal protection you do have. To prove most things with the DCMA they need to be stupid enough to hand out proof they broke it: if they don't (IE all their friends never tell anyone, custom make a crack, etc) they'll never be caught.