lock a data file on CD_ROM

Copy Protect your ".ra" file through the US Library of Congress for $30.00.

Do a web search on "Copyright" + "Library of Congress" to find their (?.gov) web page which allows you to download the submittal form and Adobe Reader (if you don't have it).

Good Luck.

If I understand you correctly, you wish to place a useful file onto a CD and allow customers to have free access to the CD. You wish to allow the customers to be able to copy off files from the CD onto other media. There is _one_ file that you do not wish to be copiable, but it should still be usable.

IMHO, this is not a feasible requirement as stated.

You _might_ constrain the user to use (for playback) only some software on the CD, and then have that software use some internal techniqueto determine the file to use (i.e. not .ra). You might also embed the .ra file within another, so that a "normal" .ra reader cannot use it, but yours (the one from the CD) can read it, thus making it useless to make a copy, because your software will only look to the CD for the file !

Neither of these ideas will _prevent_ someone from making a copy of the file, but they will make copying it pointless.

You should also note that nothing prevents the user from just duplicating the CD !

You could try renameing the file to some other extension and then have your own program run the file. This will not stop some one from makeing a copy of the file but it will slow them down.

The other item would be to create your own file structure that you save the sounds to. That way you would then also have to write your own program to read it. And put some kind of protection/use policy on that program. That way if they copy the sound file it will not be any good to them since they would need your own specific program to read that file.

Since there is no file protection on the cd that will stop some one from coping the file. If they were on your network you could possibley do something, but out in the field with other computers that you have no control over you can't stop them from it. Microsoft tried putting 1.6 MB on a specially formated disk for there old windows office disks, may be you could also try something like that - make the file so big that no one would want to copy it, but that would still leave the disk being copied in whole.

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