Marketplace item illegal sharing tracker

I was brainstorming about a way how we could protect our marketplace items better against illegal sharing on other websites.

I came up with a nifty way that if Envato would implement this, that we could know what users shared wich files.

The way you could do this is when a user downloads a files that their user id or email is added to the comment field of the zipped script. This can be done very easily like this:

$zip = new ZipArchive();
$res = $zip->open('script.zip');
if($res === true) {
    $zip->setArchiveComment('user_1345435');
    $zip->close();
} 

// Download zip code here

When the file now is shared on other websites, the evato staff can download a copy, read out the comment field and find out wich user shared that file.

Of course, if a user deletes this comment tag from the zip it will not work but I’m sure 99% of the users here doesn’t know a zip file has a comment field, let alone know how to edit it.

Great idea but I think those users that might not have a clue on how to, will sure try to find out now that this thread is available.And my guess is the people that do this kind of “acts of vandalism” have a medium knowledge on how to use a machine and it’s apps.

But a great start, and maybe with some help this will lead to a great protection system for our files.

Nice idea, worth trying!

good idea but impraticable due to the cloud used to serve files

I think this isn’t a bad idea at all. This would be one step forward to protect authors. But then again like NechitaPaulFlavius said, it isn’t a great idea to post in the forum how you will track rippers.

I agree on all thoughts presented. Even though it’s posted on the forum it would at least reduce the number of illegally shared files. That is a good start.

I don’t think discuss this in a public forum is a problem. There was also a public decussion about how to protect your javascript files from stealing a while back. But I still catch 4 to 5 members a week with this system that are trying to steal my scripts.

Something definitely needs to be done, the last theme I had accepted, I googled the name of it a couple hours after it was accepted and found several sites putting it up for download… after a couple of hours

Good idea though Sitebase

Sitebase said
I was brainstorming about a way how we could protect our marketplace items better against illegal sharing on other websites.

I came up with a nifty way that if Envato would implement this, that we could know what users shared wich files.

The way you could do this is when a user downloads a files that their user id or email is added to the comment field of the zipped script. This can be done very easily like this:

$zip = new ZipArchive();
$res = $zip->open('script.zip');
if($res === true) {
    $zip->setArchiveComment('user_1345435');
    $zip->close();
} 

// Download zip code here

When the file now is shared on other websites, the evato staff can download a copy, read out the comment field and find out wich user shared that file.

Of course, if a user deletes this comment tag from the zip it will not work but I’m sure 99% of the users here doesn’t know a zip file has a comment field, let alone know how to edit it.

+1

it can’t be done.
downloads are hosted on external cloud, the file can’t be altered by adding user related data right before serving the zip.