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From: madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Protecting against copying from hard disks
Message-ID: <579@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Nov-86 20:43:16 EST
Article-I.D.: bucsb.579
Posted: Sat Nov  8 20:43:16 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Nov-86 05:55:05 EST
References: <836@ur-tut.UUCP>
Reply-To: madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Jim Frost)
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 36
Summary: Easy way to patch DOS

In article <836@ur-tut.UUCP> akk2@ur-tut.UUCP (A Kacker) writes:
>What we would like to be able to is
>to somehow make it difficult for users to copy anything off of our hard disks.
>Two things come to my mind on ways of implementing this :
>
>1. If only there was a way to set an attribute of the program to 
>   'protected' a la macintosh programs, that would come up with a 
>    message saying that this program can not be copied.
>

I am reasonably sure you can't do that.  Never caught it in the DOS
Tech Ref manual :-).

>2. Another way would be to somehow modify DOS so that copying from
>   C: was disabled. If COPY had been an external command, a batch file
>   would have done the job.
>

How about:
Go through COMMAND.COM and find the COPY command.  This is really easy to do
with Norton Utilities.  Make it anything you want, the more bizarre the better.
This should disable the COPY command within DOS.  Then just write your own,
naming it anything you want.  This way, you can restrict access better.  It's
hardly foolproof, but it oughta work to keep at least some people from
copying things.  This is simple and quick, and should help until some real
guru comes along with a better way.

>Atul Kacker
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