Hi, folks!
So, I’ve been playing with ExtendScript the other night, and I came up with an idea of a tool that will kinda-sorta-mostly protect After Effects templates from piracy.
I’m testing it and making some improvements and I’d like to know if something like this will be needed to authors and if Envato will be ok with this sort of thing.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Define kinda-sorta-mostly”. Ok, here’s the thing.
Author will have an ability with a click of a button to encrypt (“scramble”) the project - script will mess up everything, move, rename, scale stuff, change transfer modes, break expressions, etc. In other words it’ll make project completely broken and useless. But! It will also output “installer” jsx script. So, user downloads the project, runs the installer script which (tadaam) asks for Envato purchase code. Once purchase code is verified, installer “un-scrambles” the project.
Now I know what you’re thinking. “There’s no point! Pirates can just release decrypted version!”. But! Theres one more thing. If someone posts decrypted project somewhere, author will be able to download it and check which purchase code activated this copy (details on how are classified for now 
) and report the bad guy to Envato.
Great! Looking forward to this.
Very interesting idea )
Yes, it will be great if Envato accept this scrpit for adding to our AE project, but will pirates able (or easily) to remove the “watermark” of “which purchase code activated this copy” on the project ? waiting for this script on sale soon ! Cheers !
“There’s no point! Pirates can just create 10/100/1000 more accounts!” )
Technically it’s possible to completely get rid of any kind of protection. Because it’s still just an AE project.
But the whole point of this tool is to make it as hard as it can possibly be to bypass it.
But then again, I’d love to here Envato’s opinion. Will they accept these kind of projects at all is what I’m concerned about 
Well, also that, yes.
But as I said in a previous post, the point of it is to make pirating as difficult as possible in a first place.
This is really cool! It’s true though that it will still allow users to distrubute the products, since they just save as, and re-upload, but it will help
I had been thinking about a solution for a while as well, but I don’t have any experience in code. What will be cool is to have an easily editable script which authors can customise and this script will control major elements of the template, for instance color, scale of certain objects, etc. Basically it will have a slider, color, and checkbox widget, which authors can attach any parameter to. Then when it’s compiled a purchase code will be required to activate the script, and without it the project won’t have these editable features, making the project useless. Thus, the script will give a nice UI where clients can customise their project from, while giving protection for us. The latest ‘FX Particle Builder’ by PixFlow is using something like this.
This is also, legal in envato etc, since some authors are already doing it.
What do you think? Is this possible? I would definitely use this and even pay money for such a product, since I have been looking for a solution for a long time! Contact me if you have in mind to do something similar 
That’s why activation code check thingie for authors will be built as “last resort”.
Now that is an awesome idea I didn’t think about at all!
`[quote=“fivepointseven, post:9, topic:39727”]
Now that is an awesome idea I didn’t think about at all!
[/quote]
I’m really glad to hear that! I think this way protection can be attached with each download, even if someone re-uploads it the ‘decrypted’ file.`
I think there must be some ways to protect the AE project, or make pirate more difficult to share the projects illegally.
But the main probelm is, even we checked which purchase code the pirate is, will Envato agree to ban the bad account or even ban the same paypal/credt card which the bad account used to purchase the file ? we didn’t hear any official feedback so far… Actually, if Envato care this issue, I believe they can make some code/script to stop pirate, may be they think that the people downloading illegal copy are not the potential buyer, I mean even there is no free download in 3rd site, they won’t buy the item from Envato, they just want free thing.
http://softwarefileprotection.com/t-safe-project-file-protection-for-adobe-after-effects
I found this interesting software, may be it can inspire you !
From my experience of this kind of thing, you’ll probably just end up making more work for yourself.
I agree with felt tips here.
Pirates don’t care about their account, they demand a sale reversal and lose their account anyway, this just makes more work to the authors but will hardly do anything against the problem.
Wow! 
You will not believe me! I have absolutely the same idea!
But I’m not going to create such a script, because of several issues:
- As @Creattive said pirate don’t care about their accounts.
- You don’t know how Envato staff react on such encrypt AE projects.
- I think authors will not like the idea that their project will depend on another guy.
- And the main reason --> It’s really risky. You may lose a lot of time and have only few sales. (As I do, with another script) It’s better to create another Title Animation, that is how this market work.
Any protection is useless until Envato will give to us the tool to make the purchase code invalid. Or you may create your own site that will work like a bridge between your script and Envato… But it’s too complicated.
PS: By the way, do you use old Envato API, or a new one with SSL? Unfortunately ExtendScript can’t handle SSL, and I’m too stupid to solve this problem. 