new laser project for internet sales

[leland huang]

I met a customer who wants to sell his own design pictures through his website. The key issue is that the pictures must not be used after the machine cuts, it means the picture quantity must be limited, say buyers want to cut 1000 pcs pictures, but after 1000 pcs cutting, the machine can not cut any more, even the picture downloaded in computer can't be used.

The key point is this customer wants to protect his pictures, without paying, his buyers can not use his pictures. If they want to cut, they must pay again, even for same pictures they once bought. This customer will buy laser machines for his pictures buyers.

Our technician contacted Ruida, Qiancheng, Leetro technicians, but was told not easy to develop new motherboard function.

It is big project, say machines quantity is 100-150 sets, attractive, but till now I haven't found a way to meet his demand.

Anyone has better idea?

[Rodne Gold]

Your customer has a silly idea....in my opinion of course..

[leland huang]

Hi Mr. Rodne Gold, yes, he asked for too much. But once Ruida technicians told us they can develop new image software and new motherboard function. New software only supports one file format, in this way to stop his buyers from transforming pictures to others. New motherboard function can limit quantity and cancel saving function. But finally they refused to accept this job.

I think best way is to buy machines and cut for his buyers.

[Rodne Gold]

It's almost impossible to protect the graphic , it can be converted to other formats (tracing it , converting it) and then be used ad infinitum
the user can just buy another laser - $3000k and use it on that
I would never buy a compromised product like a laser that is only limited to engraving your customers pictures
Apart from that , if he supplies the lasers , he has to do support on them..

[leland huang]

he wants to control everything: graphic, machine. So finally we stopped.

[Nicolas Silva]

Your customer has a silly idea....in my opinion of course..

totally agree. it might be cheaper to pay a graphic designer to reverse engineer the graphic. pay once, use forever.
heck, fiverr.com is full of graphic designers that will do it for $5.

[Kev Williams]

Since the 70's much of mine and my dad's work has been dealing with would-be zillionaires and their ideas. The common thread is typically in 2 parts:
1- I have this great idea and we'll sell a million of 'em!
2- ...'test marketing'...?

;)

[Doug Griffith]

Thinking out loud:

Images have embeded metadata including a unique identifier and allowed usage count encrypted as a single string.

The driver will not process the image unless the metadata exists and decrypts properly.

On first run, the unique identifier is stored in memory along with the count which is decremented by one.

The count is decremented with each use of the image using the unique identifier as the key.

When the count reaches zero, the driver will not process the image.

The problem with this method is that the count is tied to one piece of hardware which requires dedicated non-volatile memory. It would also only process provided images.

There would also be issues with "false starts" and whatnot.