Vaporware DRM - A solution in a technique

[Purr4me]

I can't stand the suspense so here is what you should be finding. this is a revised version of the same shot only milliseconds apart ,left upper corner there IS the title listed in Georgia fonts Velvet in color but I needed to prove the point. this can be done with any thing really.

 

Edited January 17, 2020 by Purr4me

[Jeoshua]

Guys guys chill... she's married. And no, not to me.

 

What Kitty is demonstrating is called watermarking. There is also something called Steganography, which is the process of replacing the low bits of information in a file with something else, in a way that cannot be detected, for the purposes of hiding information. You could use this to embed a signature, a message, or even data. And either one is capable of being used with almost any image format.

[Purr4me]

Correct

[azurkryptos]

I just stumbled into this thread and it has kept me enthralled for the last hour. I'm a long time lurker of the nexus forums and have very few posts, but am breaking my silence to say this is a great answer to Bethesda/YouTube/Facebook/EveryOtherPlatform to easily and automatically take down non-authorized reproductions of digital works. A widely shared digital signaturing system that works similarly to bitcoin block-chaining where every site could easily scan newly uploaded content for a digital signature/s embedded in an uploaded file.

 

Could block-chaining solve this problem for the creator in a similar way it solves the problem for BitCoin?

 

Below are some scenarios that popped into mind regarding this tech and how it could be used. I'd love others thoughts on scenarios that beat up on this idea.

 

1. Signature is tied to the account at the site where the content was originally uploaded. Someone copied and decompiled the code and uploaded on the same site? Check the file for signatures on upload and check against the block chain. Whomever is earliest in the block-chain wins (gets to upload or is denied upload).

 

2. Someone overcomes this check on upload by adding the code to other code without the bake in? Two signatures have then been applied and whomever is earlier in the block-chain wins (i.e. content is removed by a bot at a rate faster than user can update the code/gain traction).

 

3. Editing your own content? While bake in applies another set of signatures the base private key of the signature is identical to the original bake in. File gets a little larger, but file is allowed to update without hangup.

 

4. Default block-chain check server is down? Each site has a shared copy of the block-chain that contains the file's signature date so it roles over to another one (and another one, and another one [DJ Kaled]) Until all existing signatures are verified.

 

5. Want to keep your code open source but want first there credit where it's due? Select open source in the dialog or set it as default in your account. Signature gets baked in but other files that use the code can return an automated list of who had first dibs (and second, and third, and forth, and...well you get the picture).

 

6. Interesting side effect - Want to know how far your source code has travelled? You don't need to find each file where it has been used and then uploaded. Just run a script on the block-chain that looks for your signature for that code snapshot. Now you know how many times that exact code has been uploaded.

 

7. They strip out the digital signature (except with the recently discovered mathematical approximation of random getting even faster and better than previous methods this is unlikely).

 

Will add other scenarios to above that I think of and from any further comments [with your permission of course]. The power of block-chain is that the history is baked in and then shared in the distributed repository. You have to break security of majority of people hosting a repository in order to modify enough histories in order that the modified history exists in more places than the unmodified history.

[Gilibran]

This is a very good initiative and needs to be thorougly fleshed out. In the mean time i was wondering for the short term, do mod installers work on consoles? I searched but found no answer. I do not know how hard it is to make one for a mod, but there are alot of them out there that use a installer. What if you "simply" made a installer only version of your mods if installers turn out to not work on consoles? "Simply" "hack up" your mod and make the user tick a few checkboxes

 

Any thief would have to rebuild the mod in the CK if they want to get rid of the installer and upload it for consoles?

 

It's just a thought, i have absolutely no idea if this would work.

[Jeoshua]

Block Chains:

While a very good, capable, and proven technology, usage of Block Chains would require internet access and dedicated servers. And I have no desire to figure out how to implement that kind of thing in the Fallout4 engine without some kind of extension, on an XBox or PS4; it's just not going to be possible. It's a fantastic idea, but honestly I don't think that's in the cards for Fallout 4 mods.

 

Mods on Console:

The process for installing mods on console is identical to that of downloading and installing them through Bethesda.net for PC. There are no install scripts possible. Any process that requires an install script is not going to be possible with consoles, as that is not a feature offered through the in-game mod downloader. The idea would work, if your goal is to make a mod PC only. It would probably be as simple as requiring an ini setting of some sort to be changed in a particular way before the mod would work. However, plenty of PC users are just as clueless about how to read the instruction manual as anyone else, and thus there WILL be bug reports using that method. Trust me, it doesn't matter how well you explain the process, some people just will not read it, and they will think the mod is broken. These people somehow intimately understand the methods used to report bugs, but not the concept of a readme file. C'est la vie.

Edited June 16, 2016 by Jeoshua