persistent popup window

[J.O. Aho]

Security is not about fun. Some of our audio files may be
commercially viable, and I'm trying to do whatever I can to protect
the artist from unauthorized commercial use.

If you want to protect the audio files, then you need to place them in a
location from you only can access the files if you have authorized yourself
before, you can still make it easy and have the files as mp3's as Ed suggested.

I understand that, with
some technical knowledge, nothing is completely foolproof, but I want
to make it as difficult as possible for the MP3 file to be captured to
a casual listeners computer.

All audio that can be played on a computer, can be easily captured, just
record the audio out and you have a wav file with the same quality audio as
the audio streamed from your site.

If anybody here can suggest a more secure way to do it, I'd sure like
to hear about it. Thanks.

As you say you have a password protection on your site and it's only your
family who has access to the page, why make it more difficult for them to
listen to the music?

 

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

Security is not about fun. Some of our audio files may be
commercially viable, and I'm trying to do whatever I can to protect
the artist from unauthorized commercial use.

Please read <http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html>.

An excerpt:

"every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales
of all the CDs go up. A lot."

 

[kjk]

If you want to protect the audio files, then you need to place them in a
location from you only can access the files if you have authorized yourself
before, you can still make it easy and have the files as mp3's as Ed suggested.




All audio that can be played on a computer, can be easily captured, just
record the audio out and you have a wav file with the same quality audio as
the audio streamed from your site.




As you say you have a password protection on your site and it's only your
family who has access to the page, why make it more difficult for them to
listen to the music?

That's no guarantee. The primary reason for the password is to
protect against those people who are surfing the internet looking for
private information to use for criminal purposes.  It's only prudent
to assume that the password will sometimes be given to friends as well
as family members, and from there . . . who knows?

place them in a location from you only can access the files

The MP3s are within the secure, password protected, area.

can be easily captured, just record the audio out

I do recognize that, with some technical knowledge, practically
anything can be captured, but I suspect that the average visitor to
our family website wouldn't know how to do that. I do give the artist
the option of having me reduce the sound quality of the file in order
to make it undesireable for unauthorized commercial purposes, but,
understandably, they would much prefer it to be heard in the quality
in which it was intended to be heard. Btw, this music is copyrighted,
but that also doesn't mean very much unless you have lots of money for
legal fees. I'm just trying to provide as many layers of security as
is practical.

Ken

 

[kjk]

Please read <http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html>.

An excerpt:

"every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales
of all the CDs go up. A lot."

---------------------------

That looks good. I printed it out and I'll have to read it carefully,
along with the followup. Thanks. Maybe I can add a music store to
the website and sell CDs.

Ken

 

[J.O. Aho]

That's no guarantee. The primary reason for the password is to
protect against those people who are surfing the internet looking for
private information to use for criminal purposes. It's only prudent
to assume that the password will sometimes be given to friends as well
as family members, and from there . . . who knows?

Then it's your own fault if you give away the password to untrustworthy people
and at this point there aren't anything you can do to protect the audio by
other way than remove them from the net.

I do recognize that, with some technical knowledge, practically
anything can be captured, but I suspect that the average visitor to
our family website wouldn't know how to do that.

I wouldn't make a such assumption, starting a simple recording program is
quite simple, even in a microsoft environment.

I do give the artist
the option of having me reduce the sound quality of the file in order
to make it undesireable for unauthorized commercial purposes, but,
understandably, they would much prefer it to be heard in the quality
in which it was intended to be heard. Btw, this music is copyrighted,
but that also doesn't mean very much unless you have lots of money for
legal fees. I'm just trying to provide as many layers of security as
is practical.

In that case, take them off the net, thats the only way to go.

 

[Ed Mullen]

------------------------------

Security is not about fun. Some of our audio files may be
commercially viable, and I'm trying to do whatever I can to protect
the artist from unauthorized commercial use. I understand that, with
some technical knowledge, nothing is completely foolproof, but I want
to make it as difficult as possible for the MP3 file to be captured to
a casual listeners computer. The website is password protected, the
javascript points to an HTM file, the HTM file points to an M3U file,
the M3U file points to the MP3 file, so the average computer user
would have some difficulty trying to locate and get at the MP3 file.
If the MP3 file is playing in the listeners audio player, it's a
simple process to Save As.

I'm sorry, if a link on your site points me to a .m3u file, what makes
you think you can dictate how my system will handle that? Regardless,
if it's playing through my computer's sound system (no matter /what/ the
method) I *can* capture it. And so can anyone else using free software
readily available.

If the site is password protected then you, presumably, trust the people
to whom you give the password, right? I mean, I wouldn't be giving a pw
to someone I thought would possibly steal from me.

Your premise is that going to all this work and jumping through all
these hoops is to protect you from an "average user" making unauthorized
commercial use of the music. I doubt that anyone who would do that
would be an "average user."

Good grief. Slap copyright notices on the music links and be done with
it until you hear a stolen work on the radio: Then start suing everyone
in sight.

 

[Ed Mullen]

That's no guarantee. The primary reason for the password is to
protect against those people who are surfing the internet looking for
private information to use for criminal purposes. It's only prudent
to assume that the password will sometimes be given to friends as well
as family members, and from there . . . who knows?


The MP3s are within the secure, password protected, area.


I do recognize that, with some technical knowledge, practically
anything can be captured, but I suspect that the average visitor to
our family website wouldn't know how to do that. I do give the artist
the option of having me reduce the sound quality of the file in order
to make it undesireable for unauthorized commercial purposes, but,
understandably, they would much prefer it to be heard in the quality
in which it was intended to be heard. Btw, this music is copyrighted,
but that also doesn't mean very much unless you have lots of money for
legal fees. I'm just trying to provide as many layers of security as
is practical.

Ken

Ken, take them off the Internet. Make CDs. Put them in envelopes and
mail them to your family members. Problem solved and not a password,
HTML coding nor a line of javascript required.

 

[scripts.contact]

popup window persistently float above all other windows?

you can try something like(focus the new window every 1 millisecond)-
win=open('','_blank','width=500,height=400');
setInterval('win.focus()',1)

or(focus it on blur) :

win=open('','_blank','width=500,height=400');
win.onblur=function(){win.focus()}

 

[Travis Newbury]

Not to be argumentative, but I really hate ie7. Sure, some of the styling
issues are fixed and maybe the security is a bit improved, but I think it
lost more than it gained. Where's the native ftp (which is largely why I
use ie6 in the first place), the brisk, snappy response time, and why can't
you customize the moronically-laid-out toolbar? If I died and could only
take 2 browsers with me to geek-purgatory, they'd be Firefox and ie6.
(Opera has some innovative features and some suprisingly perfected styling
features but it just has too many bugs in operation to make me a happy
camper.)

IE 7 blows, and it will single handedly be the reason everyone flocks
to other browsers.

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

Ken, take them off the Internet. Make CDs. Put them in envelopes and
mail them to your family members. Problem solved and not a password,
HTML coding nor a line of javascript required.

That's a very practical advise, and I would also suggest something along
those lines. If you assume everybody wants to harm you by stealing your
property (rights), then don't jump into this business. The music
industry is on a downhill slope exactly because of such an attitude.

cheers
bernhard

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

you can try something like(focus the new window every 1 millisecond)-
win=open('','_blank','width=500,height=400');
setInterval('win.focus()',1)

or(focus it on blur) :

win=open('','_blank','width=500,height=400');
win.onblur=function(){win.focus()}

Wow! I'd click the disable JavaScript button real quick and my second
action will be the back button to never return. I'm pretty sure that
will be the reaction of many visitors or for the less savvy to panic and
click the little "x" button in the title bar...

 

[kjk]

you can try something like(focus the new window every 1 millisecond)-
win=open('','_blank','width=500,height=400');
setInterval('win.focus()',1)

or(focus it on blur) :

win=open('','_blank','width=500,height=400');
win.onblur=function(){win.focus()}

----------------------------------

THIS may be what I'm looking for (for the legitimate purpose described
in another part ot this thread). The only problem is that I don't
have enough knowledge to be able to implement it. Can you show me how
to edit it into the following script?

<A href="javascript:void(window.open('audio/Song.htm', 'ccTuner',
'width=300,height=120,left=10,top=10,status=no,resizable=no,scrollbars=no'))">Song</A>

Thanks,

Ken

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:34:19
GMT Travis Newbury scribed:

IE 7 blows, and it will single handedly be the reason everyone flocks
to other browsers.

Another thing, after MS made the well-announced push to come out with a
"standards-compliant" browser and gave us ie7, I didn't hear much about the
"thereafter" as in updates, corrections, etc. Ya think they'll wait
another 6 or 7 years in petulant silence before we get ie8? Tell ya what I
think - I think they don't have that much time to waste anymore.
Furthermore, they may never make up the time they've already wasted.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:13:53 GMT
Jonathan N. Little scribed:

Wow! I'd click the disable JavaScript button real quick and my second
action will be the back button to never return. I'm pretty sure that
will be the reaction of many visitors or for the less savvy to panic and
click the little "x" button in the title bar...

It's a case of the blind leading the blind. Oh, I will say that from past
posts scripts.contact seems to know javascript pretty well (-although I'm
not 100% sure his latest method will work all that well generally), but
however implimented, it's still a '90s technique. And, of course, kjk is
obviously clueless to most anything.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:13:53 GMT
Jonathan N. Little scribed:


It's a case of the blind leading the blind. Oh, I will say that from past
posts scripts.contact seems to know javascript pretty well (-although I'm
not 100% sure his latest method will work all that well generally), but
however implimented, it's still a '90s technique. And, of course, kjk is
obviously clueless to most anything.

I agree. But I will try one more time for reason to OP. This
"onblur->focus()" was|is a standard porn site ploy as the ol'
"onunload->load". Plus it will *not* do what you desire, your visitors
will not be able to navigate your site because your music "popup" window
will always be stealing the focus every time they try to do anything on
the parent window. Listen to reason and what Jukka's oft given advice
"Stop wanting it".

 

[cwdjrxyz]

---------------------------

That looks good. I printed it out and I'll have to read it carefully,
along with the followup. Thanks. Maybe I can add a music store to
the website and sell CDs.

If you were to add music sales, of course you will need secure pages
before anyone will submit payment information to your site. If you use
secure pages such as banks and credit card companies use, there is yet
another layer of protection you can use. The computer for which the
person having a secure id and password can be detected. Even if
someone gets the password information, they will not be connected on
any other computer unless they apply on the new computer for use on
it, get an access number by email, and enter it on the new computer.
Then they may be asked for some additional information such as the
mother's maiden name, etc before being allowed to use the new
computer. A major credit card company in the US is now doing this.
Often you can avoid problems with computers with script turned off by
saying something of the sort that script must be on to download music.
If script is on, then it is used to switch this statement to hidden.
If script is off, the statement remains on, but other portions of the
site can be used. In some cases you can avoid the script off problem
by using server side script such as php.
As mentioned by others, one way to reduce unauthorized commericial use
is to reduce the sound quality which is easy to do with a mp3 using a
low sampling rate. Another way is to allow playing only a few sample
songs if you are trying to sell a CD. Another way is to allow playing
just a short bit of a song. These technique are being used by Amazon
and Google for sales of audio and video.

 

[kjk]

Please read <http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html>.

An excerpt:

"every time we make a few songs available on my website, sales
of all the CDs go up. A lot."

------------------------------

Chris,

That article is excellent. I sent that link to our artists. They
found it fascinating and were impressed with her candor about the
situation. Thanks.

Ken

 

[kjk]

If you were to add music sales, of course you will need secure pages
before anyone will submit payment information to your site. If you use
secure pages such as banks and credit card companies use, there is yet
another layer of protection you can use. The computer for which the
person having a secure id and password can be detected. Even if
someone gets the password information, they will not be connected on
any other computer unless they apply on the new computer for use on
it, get an access number by email, and enter it on the new computer.
Then they may be asked for some additional information such as the
mother's maiden name, etc before being allowed to use the new
computer. A major credit card company in the US is now doing this.
Often you can avoid problems with computers with script turned off by
saying something of the sort that script must be on to download music.
If script is on, then it is used to switch this statement to hidden.
If script is off, the statement remains on, but other portions of the
site can be used. In some cases you can avoid the script off problem
by using server side script such as php.
As mentioned by others, one way to reduce unauthorized commericial use
is to reduce the sound quality which is easy to do with a mp3 using a
low sampling rate. Another way is to allow playing only a few sample
songs if you are trying to sell a CD. Another way is to allow playing
just a short bit of a song. These technique are being used by Amazon
and Google for sales of audio and video.

----------------------------

Thanks for the info, and also for your previous link to

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/

I may be clueless, as previously stated by Neredbojias, but that's
exactly why I ask for help on usenet. If the questioner is seriously
trying to learn something, there are no stupid questions here . . .
only some stupid answers.

Ken

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Thanks for the info, and also for your previous link to

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/

I may be clueless, as previously stated by Neredbojias, but that's
exactly why I ask for help on usenet. If the questioner is seriously
trying to learn something, there are no stupid questions here . . .
only some stupid answers.

True. But but true state of 'cluelessness' is persistence in a direction
that has been adequately explained as wrong. Hopefully you understand
that desiring a persistent pop-up window is the wrong approach.

BTW note that most of the scripts at www.dynamicdrive.com are woefully
out of date and even the "updated" one are many times quite flawed.

 

[kjk]

True. But but true state of 'cluelessness' is persistence in a direction
that has been adequately explained as wrong. Hopefully you understand
that desiring a persistent pop-up window is the wrong approach.

BTW note that most of the scripts at www.dynamicdrive.com are woefully
out of date and even the "updated" one are many times quite flawed.

-------------------------

So, in patient deference to a obviously clueless questioner who's
seriously attempting to learn something that may be completely beyond
his capabilities, please now give me the remaining, yet unstated,
positive, technically helpful part . . . Where might I find a better
website from which to learn some scripting?

Ken