JP2002056618A - Optical system disk type media and software product package - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide optical system disk type media capable of preventing the installation of a duplicated or recorded program, and a software product package. SOLUTION: These optical system disk type media are a CDROM 11 made for read only for e.g. an application program or data used by the application program and are provided with shielding areas 111 to 114 where a data read error can be generated in a plurality of places in a data read area in an error restorable way. The shielding areas 111 to 114 can be eliminated with the irradiation of light such as a laser beam, the coating, etc., of chemical substances and optical material in which a refractive index or transmittance is changed with specific processing, a data read error takes place in an area where the optical material is not removed and a data read error can not occur in an area where the optical material is removed.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an optical disc type medium and a software product package capable of preventing installation of a copied or recorded program.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art The techniques (1) and (2) are known as methods for preventing installation of software recorded on an optical disk type medium (hereinafter, also simply referred to as "media").

(1) When software is recorded on a medium such as a CD-ROM or the like (hereinafter, referred to as “original medium”) that has been officially sold, a program other than an authorized user can execute the program from the original medium. Techniques for making installation impossible are known. In this method, when an installation program is to be executed, an ID (usually, a serial number attached to a product, etc.) is requested from a user, so that a person who does not have the ID cannot install the software. It can be.

(2) There is also known a method of detecting a difference between an original medium and a copied medium to make it impossible to install a program from the original medium. In this method, an error area is provided in the original medium in advance, and an ECC (Error Checking and CCC) is added to the copy program.
(correcting) processing.

[0005] Since an area where an error is originally caused is repaired by the ECC process, the installation program detects whether or not the original error area has been repaired at the time of installation, so that the medium used for the installation can be used. It can be determined whether or not it is original media. Therefore, installation from sources other than the original media can be disabled.

[0006] As methods for preventing duplication of optical disk media, the following methods (3) to (5) are known.

(3) As a method of preventing duplication of an original medium, a method of preventing all or part of a file recorded on the original medium from being copied when the file is copied to another medium is also known. I have. In this method, files necessary for software installation are written as invisible files on the original media. In the normal copying of each file or folder (or directory), the invisible file is not copied, so that the duplication of the original medium can be prevented.

(4) As another method for preventing duplication of an original medium, there is known a method of changing a format of a medium (for example, a format according to ISO9660). In this method, data and the like can be read from the original medium, but copying of the original medium is not possible.

(5) As another method for preventing copying of the original medium and also for preventing copying of the file, a pseudo huge number of bytes (for example, several hundreds) is recorded in the size information of the recorded specific file. (GB) is also known. In this method, apparently the capacity of all files is much larger than the capacity of the media used for duplication, so that it is impossible to duplicate the original media, and it is also practical to copy the specific file to a hard disk or the like. It is impossible.

[0010]

However, in the installation prevention method of (1), the owner of a copy of the original media can install the software on his own computer as long as he or she knows the ID. I will.

In the method of preventing installation (2) or the method of preventing duplication (3) to (5), a backup copy tool, that is, a tool capable of performing bit-to-bit copy (complete hard copy) is used. In such a case, it is impossible to prevent duplication of the original media. A backup copy tool is essentially
It is used for backing up the original media in case the original media is damaged, etc., but in practice it is often used in a group that conducts illegal duplication.

As described above, in any of the methods (1) to (5), illegal installation or illegal duplication of software is easily performed. Insufficient.

In particular, in each of the methods (2) to (5),
This will prevent the original purchaser of the software product from backing up the original disc, thereby causing inconvenience to the authorized user. Illegal installation or illegal duplication of the above software was considered to be the fate of read-only media such as CDROM.

An object of the present invention is to provide an optical disc type medium and a software product package which can prevent the installation of a copied or recorded program while being a read only type medium such as a CDROM. .

[0015]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An optical disk type medium according to the present invention is formed exclusively for reading an application program or for reading data used in an application program. A region in which a read error can be caused is provided so as to be error-recoverable. Incidentally, the optical disc type medium of the present invention includes:
CDROM, DVDROM, magneto-optical disk and the like are included.

Here, "error repairable" means not only that an error can be repaired by applying mechanical, chemical or electrical processing to an area where an error is originally caused, but also an area where an error is not originally caused. , Mechanical, chemical or electrical processing, or a combination of at least two of these processings to cause an error.

In the optical disk type medium of the present invention,
The area where a data read error can occur
In the case of providing M locations, 2 ^M combinations of areas where a data read error occurs and areas where a data read error does not occur can be performed for ^M areas. Thus, the optical disc type medium can have at least 2 ^M pieces of identification information. By giving different identification information to the same optical disc medium as the product content, a plurality of (for example, ^2M ) distribution versions can be provided.

The area where a data reading error can occur can be realized by forming a removable optical material on the surface of an optical disc type medium. A data read error occurs in the region where the optical material is formed, and no data read error occurs in the region where the optical material is removed. The optical material can be formed by coating or laminating on the surface of the optical disc type medium. Removal of optical material includes peeling,
This can be done by dissolution.

In the optical disc type medium of the present invention, the area where a data read error can occur
It can be formed of an optical material whose refractive index or transmittance changes by a specific treatment such as irradiation with light such as laser light or application of a chemical substance. This optical material can be selected to have such characteristics that a data read error occurs when the refractive index or transmittance does not change, and a data read error does not occur in a region where the refractive index or transmittance changes. Conversely, this optical material does not cause a data read error in a region where the refractive index or transmittance does not change,
In a region that has undergone a change in the refractive index or the transmittance, a region having a characteristic that causes a data read error can be selected. Here, the optical material can be formed by coating or laminating on the surface of the optical disc type medium.

When the optical material undergoes a change in transmittance due to the irradiation of laser light, the refractive index or transmittance of the optical material changes depending on the writing laser light of the disk drive. Depending on the laser light, a material is selected so that the refractive index or transmittance does not change.

A feature of the software product package of the present invention is that it includes the above-mentioned optical disc type medium, an eraser for removing the optical material, or a chemical for changing the refractive index and transmittance of the optical material. is there.

[0022]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS [First Embodiment] In this embodiment, a CDROM is used as an optical disk type medium included in a software product package.

As shown in FIG. 1, the CDROM 11 is located at four physically separated positions (here, 90 ° away from the outermost center) of a plurality of tracks of the CDROM 11.
Light-shielding areas 111 to 114 used as areas for setting one distribution version are prepared.

In the initial state (at the time of product sale), the light-shielding regions 111 to 114 are painted with a light-shielding material that can be removed by a predetermined means. However, the light shielding material is
It is not necessary to paint all of the shaded area. The light-shielding materials of the light-shielding regions 111 to 114 are different colors (black, white,
(Red, green), and an eraser for removing the light shielding material is attached to the software product package. In this embodiment, the light-shielding material is an organic paint, and the eraser is a solvent.

In this embodiment, the distribution version determination program MDP and the illegal copy determination program UCDP are recorded on the CDROM 11. As described later, the distribution version determination program MDP includes:
It includes a unique information acquisition function, a distribution version selection function, and a removal paint instruction function. Further, the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP includes a unique information acquisition function, a distribution version detection function, and a version collation function.

In this embodiment, the user executes the distribution version determination program MDP prior to installation of the program. Distribution Version Determination Program M
When the DP is activated, the unique information acquisition function acquires the unique information of the computer and passes it to the distribution version selection function.

The distribution version selection function selects a distribution version from the unique information, and passes information corresponding to the selected distribution version to the removal paint instruction function. The paint removal instruction function indicates to the user via the display the type of paint to be removed based on the passed information.

"Unique information" can be a string of numbers and / or characters. For example, the string is a product number of an installed OS, a product number of a motherboard, a product number of a hard disk drive, a product number of a CDROM drive, or a combination of these.

In this embodiment, the unique information of the user computer system is the product number (user number) “79878-027-1806” of the installed OS.
The first three digits are “798” in “776-60147”. The “number” may include characters such as alphabets. Further, the “specific information” is a value obtained from the name of the user registered at the time of installing the OS (for example, a value of a character code, a value obtained by processing a character code, or the like), or a value obtained from this value and the above number. It can be a value.

In the present embodiment, the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP acquires the unique information of the user computer by the unique information acquisition function, and detects the above-described manner of paint removal by the distribution version detection function. Then, the distribution version corresponding to the unique information and the distribution version of the CDROM 11 can be collated by the version collation function. In the present embodiment, the detection result by the distribution version detection function is represented by 4-bit data of black, white, red, and green from the most significant bit, and when paint in the light-shielded area is not removed (a data read error is detected). ), The detection result is "1", and when the paint is removed (when no data read error is detected), the detection result is "0".
It is said. For example, when the paint of “black” is removed, the paint of “white”, the paint of “red”, and the paint of “green” are not removed, the 4-bit distribution version data is represented by “1110”. .

A user purchases a software product package and starts a distribution version determination program MDP on a user computer. As described above, this distribution version determination program MDP has four functions corresponding to the function of acquiring unique information from the user computer (specific information acquisition function), the function of selecting a distribution version (distribution version selection function), and the distribution version. It has a function of specifying a light-shielded area (paint) to be removed from the light-shielded area and displaying the same on a display of a user computer (removed paint instruction function).

In the present embodiment, the unique information acquisition function acquires "798" as unique information. In this case, the user usually does not know that the unique information is the first three digits of the product number.

For example, based on the first three digits of the unique information, a distribution version is selected as follows (where n =
0, 1, 2, 3, ...). 16 × n + 0: Version VER01 (“000
0 ”) 16 × n + 1: version VER02 (“ 000
1 ”) 16 × n + 2: version VER03 (“ 001
0 ”) ... 16 × n + 14: Version VER15 (“ 111
0 ”) 16 × n + 15: version VER16 (“ 111
1))

In this embodiment, since the unique information is “798”, the distribution version selecting function is “version VE”.
R15 "(" 1110 ").

On the other hand, the removal paint instructing function displays on the display that green paint should be erased. The user follows the display and uses the eraser attached at the time of purchasing the software S_W to perform CDRO.
The green paint applied to M11 (that is, the paint on the light shielding area 114) is removed. With this, CD
The version “V” is stored in the ROM 11 (software S_W).
ER15 ("1110") ".

Even if a person who intends to make an illegal copy knows the above selection method, the probability that the product number of his OS corresponds to the distribution version of the original media is rare (in the above example, 16 minutes). 1), and it is practically difficult to perform unauthorized copying.

In this embodiment, the distribution version detecting function of the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP performs the CDROM 11 (or the software S_W
) Detects which of the distribution versions.

That is, in the present embodiment, when software is installed on a certain computer, a determination as to whether or not the act is valid is performed by the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP. The unauthorized copy determination program UCDP acquires the unique information “XXX” of the computer by the unique information acquisition function, and detects the version information VER15 (“1110”) from the CDROM 11 shown in FIG. 1 by the distributed version detection function.

Then, by the distribution version judgment function,
The version information “YYYY” obtained from the computer specific information “XXX” is compared with the version information VER15 (“1110”) from the CDROM 11.

Hereinafter, description will be made with reference to the flowchart of FIG. When the installation is started (S101),
The unauthorized copy determination program UCDP activates a unique information acquisition function to acquire unique information (OS product number) (S102). Thereafter, the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP activates the distribution version correspondence determination function,
It is determined whether the unique information corresponds to the distribution version of the software S_W (S103).

When the unique information corresponds to the distribution version of the software S_W, the software S_W
Although the installation of W is continued (S104), if the unique information does not correspond to the distribution version, an installation stop function is activated to stop the installation of the software S_W (S105).

[Second Embodiment] Also in this embodiment, a CDROM is used as an optical disc type medium in a software product package. As shown in FIG. 3, at 32 physically separated positions (here, portions evenly spaced from the outermost center) of a plurality of tracks of the CDROM 21, an area for setting a distribution version of the CDROM 21 is provided. Light shielding area 2101 used
To 2132 are prepared.

In this embodiment, the light shielding areas 2101 to 2101
In 2132, an optical material is formed. This optical material has a low light transmittance before being irradiated with laser light, but exhibits such characteristics that the light transmittance changes to a high value when irradiated with laser light.

In this embodiment, the distribution version determination program MDP and the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP are recorded on the CDROM 21. As described later, the distribution version determination program MDP includes:
It includes a unique information acquisition function, a distribution version selection function, and a distribution version writing function. Further, the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP includes a unique information acquisition function, a distribution version detection function, and a version collation function similar to the first embodiment.

In this embodiment, prior to software installation, the distribution version determination program MDP
Is executed. When the distribution version determination program MDP is started, the unique information acquisition function acquires the unique information of the computer and passes it to the distribution version selection function. The distribution version selection function selects a distribution version from the unique information, and passes information corresponding to the selected distribution version to the distribution version writing function. The distribution version writing function performs the light shielding area 21 based on the passed information.
A write beam is appropriately applied to 01 to 2132.

FIGS. 4A and 4B show the CD shown in FIG.
FIG. 4A is a diagram illustrating a state in which a bit of a ROM 21 is irradiated with a write beam WB from a laser device 31. FIG.
(B) shows a cross section along a track of the CDROM 21. 4 (A) and 4 (B) and FIG.
In (A) and (B), the track is also shown as the reflection layer 23. In the present embodiment, the write beam WB is
Irradiation is continuously performed on all tracks or a part of the tracks included in the light shielding area.

FIG. 5A is a cross-sectional view taken along a track showing a state where the read beam RB is irradiated from the laser device 31 to a region having a small light transmittance.
(B) shows the case where the read beam R
FIG. 5 is a cross-sectional view along a track showing a state when B is irradiated. FIGS. 7A and 7B show the photo sensor 32.
This photosensor 32 can detect the reflected light of the read beam RB. Since the intensity of the read beam RB is low, the light transmittance of the optical material does not change.

As shown in FIG. 5 (A), when the read beam RB is radiated to a region where the light transmittance is small,
Since the light amount detected by the photo sensor 52 is small,
A data read error occurs. Further, as shown in FIG. 5B, when the read beam RB is irradiated on the region A having a large light transmittance, the light amount detected by the photosensor 32 is sufficient, so that no data read error occurs.

If there is no data read error in a certain light-shielded area, the light-shielded area itself is set to “bit“ 0 ””.
When a data read error occurs frequently, the light-shielded area itself is defined as “having bit“ 1 ””. It goes without saying that the distribution version detection function does not stop the execution of the program even if a data read error occurs.

In the present embodiment, the “specific information” is the same as in the first embodiment, and the product number (user number) of the installed OS “79878-027-1”
806776-60147 ", the first three digits" 79
8 ".

In this embodiment, the distribution version is selected as follows (where n = 0, 1, 2, 3,...) Based on the first three digits of the unique information. 32 × n + 0: version VER01 (“0000
0 ”) 32 × n + 1: version VER02 (“ 0000
1 ”) 32 × n + 2: version VER03 (“ 0001
0 ") 32 xn + 30: version VER31 (" 1111
0 ”) 32 × n + 31: version VER32 (“ 1111
1))

In this embodiment, the distribution version selection function selects “VER31” (“11110”) from versions “VER01” to “VER32”.

The distribution version writing function irradiates a light beam to the light shielding area 2132 and does not irradiate the light shielding area 2101 to 2131 based on the unique information “11110” passed from the distribution version selecting function. As a result, the version “VER31” is assigned to the CDROM 21 (software S_W).

Even if a person who intends to make an illegal copy knows the above selection method, the probability that the product number of his OS corresponds to the distribution version of the original media is rare (in the above example, 32 minutes). 1), and it is practically difficult to perform unauthorized copying.

In the present embodiment, when software is installed on a certain computer, whether or not the act is valid is determined by an unauthorized copy determination program UCD.
Performed by P.

In this embodiment, the unauthorized copy determination program UCDP acquires the unique information “XXX” of the computer by the unique information acquisition function, and the version information VER 31 (“11110”) from the CDROM 21 shown in FIG. )).

Then, by the distribution version judgment function,
The version information “YYYYY” obtained from the unique information “XXX” of the computer is compared with the version information VER31 (“11110”) from the CDROM 21.

In this case, the unauthorized copy determination program U
The operation of the CDP is almost the same as that in the first embodiment (see FIG. 2). When the unique information corresponds to the distribution version of the software S_W, the installation of the software S_W is continued (FIG. 2). S1
If the unique information does not correspond to the distribution version, the installation of the software S_W is stopped (see S105 in FIG. 2).

Note that C in the first and second embodiments
DROM can also be copied by a copy tool that can perform ECC. In this case, it is extremely unlikely that the software recorded on the CDROM can be used on a computer other than the computer on which the software is installed, so that virtually complete copy protection can be achieved.

[0060]

According to the present invention, it is possible to prevent the installation of a copied or recorded program even though the medium is a read-only type medium such as a CDROM.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing a CDROM according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a process of an unauthorized copy determination program according to the first and second embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram illustrating a CDROM according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

4A is a diagram showing a state in which a bit of the CDROM shown in FIG. 3 is irradiated with a write beam WB from a laser device 31. FIG. () Is a diagram showing a cross section along a track of the CDROM 21.

FIG. 5A is a cross-sectional view along a track showing a state where a read beam is irradiated from a laser device to a region having a small light transmittance, and FIG. 5B is a sectional view showing a region having a large light transmittance. FIG. 5 is a cross-sectional view along a track showing a state when a read beam RB is irradiated.

[Explanation of symbols]

 11, 21 CDROM 31 Laser device 32 Photo sensor 111 to 114, 2101 to 2132 Light shielding area MDP Distribution version detection program S_W Software UCDP Unauthorized copy determination program VSP version selection program

──────────────────────────────────────────────────の Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification symbol FI Theme coat ゛ (Reference) G11B 20/10 G11B 20/18 570N 20/18 570 572C 572 572F G06F 9/06 660G (72) Inventor Okada Junichi 2-11-7 Iwamotocho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo F-term within MSA Inc. (Reference) 5B076 AA01 FC06 5D029 MA31 PA03 5D044 AB01 BC03 CC06 DE02 DE27 DE50 DE57 GK12 GK17 5D090 AA01 BB02 CC03 DD03 FF09 FF38GG33

Claims (12)

[Claims] 1. An optical disc-type medium created exclusively for reading an application program or data used by the application program,
An optical disc-type medium, wherein an area where a data reading error can be caused is provided in a plurality of data reading areas so as to be able to recover the error. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein M areas are provided in which a data read error can occur, and at least 2 ^M pieces of identification information are provided by a combination of an area in which a data read error occurs and an area in which a data read error does not occur. 2. The optical disc type medium according to claim 1, comprising: 3. The optical disc-type medium according to claim 1, wherein the identification information is different, but has the same product content. 4. A removable optical material is formed in said area where a data read error can occur,
4. The optical disk medium according to claim 1, wherein a data read error occurs in an area where the optical material is not removed, and a data read error does not occur in an area where the optical material is removed. . 5. The optical disc type medium according to claim 4, wherein the optical material is laminated on the surface of the optical disc type medium by coating or laminating. 6. The region where a data read error can occur is formed of an optical material whose refractive index or transmittance changes by a predetermined process, and the region which is not affected by the refractive index or transmittance changes in a predetermined process. No data read error occurs in a region where a data read error has occurred and the refractive index or transmittance has changed, or no data read error occurs in a region where the refractive index or transmittance has not changed, and the refraction does not occur. 2. The optical disc-type medium according to claim 1, wherein a data read error occurs in an area having a change in transmittance or transmittance. 7. The disk medium according to claim 6, wherein the predetermined processing is irradiation of a laser beam. 8. The disk medium according to claim 7, wherein the optical material does not change its refractive index or transmittance depending on a reading laser beam of a disk drive. 9. The optical disc medium according to claim 7, wherein the optical material is laminated on the surface of the optical disc medium by coating or laminating. 10. The disk medium according to claim 6, wherein the predetermined processing is application of a chemical. 11. A software product package, comprising: the optical disc-type medium according to claim 4; and an eraser for removing the optical material. 12. A software product package, comprising: the optical disc medium according to claim 9; and a chemical that changes the refractive index or transmittance of the optical material.