Providing sofware downloads

[xoggoth]

Decided to add program download options to my website. Sales of our CDs are dropping off, too pricey and inconvenient these days.

Planning to use same cart pages but with radio buttons for download/CD. Obviously former sets lower price and no postage and (assuming there are no other posted orders) the delivery details required are reduced to just customer name & email. Bung those in mysql table for check, customer clicks link in email sent, fills in name to download.

Leaves some problems I can think of:
1) I would like to restrict sales to UK only for insurance reasons but doesn't seem any reliable way of doing it. I could ensure only GBP cards are useable but that's not quite same thing. Not sure if just a notice "for UK only" would be legally sufficient.
2) How to stop download being available to anyone who has that link but still allow customer to try again if his download fails for some reason. How can one detect if a download has worked?
3) How to restrict number copies installed.

Anyone got any experience of this, any general tips, pitfalls etc? Cheers.

[eek]

Could you ignore the download issue and create a validation routine when called when program first runs? The page could then provide a link to your website if they haven't already registered.

This could then call a webservice to validate the installation and the number of times that user had installed the software.

Trying to ensure people have loaded the software correctly is a world of pain.

[TestMangler]

Decided to add program download options to my website. Sales of our CDs are dropping off, too pricey and inconvenient these days.

Planning to use same cart pages but with radio buttons for download/CD. Obviously former sets lower price and no postage and (assuming there are no other posted orders) the delivery details required are reduced to just customer name & email. Bung those in mysql table for check, customer clicks link in email sent, fills in name to download.

Leaves some problems I can think of:
1) I would like to restrict sales to UK only for insurance reasons but doesn't seem any reliable way of doing it. I could ensure only GBP cards are useable but that's not quite same thing. Not sure if just a notice "for UK only" would be legally sufficient.
2) How to stop download being available to anyone who has that link but still allow customer to try again if his download fails for some reason. How can one detect if a download has worked?
3) How to restrict number copies installed.

Anyone got any experience of this, any general tips, pitfalls etc? Cheers.

How will you be processing payment Xog ? If it's paypal, there is a php script called 'LinkLok' which does exactly what you want. It sends a virtual link to the customer which can only be used a fixed number of times (configurable) and within a specified time period. Have used it in the past and it works well and is very easy to set up.

[doodab]

Decided to add program download options to my website. Sales of our CDs are dropping off, too pricey and inconvenient these days.

Planning to use same cart pages but with radio buttons for download/CD. Obviously former sets lower price and no postage and (assuming there are no other posted orders) the delivery details required are reduced to just customer name & email. Bung those in mysql table for check, customer clicks link in email sent, fills in name to download.

Leaves some problems I can think of:
1) I would like to restrict sales to UK only for insurance reasons but doesn't seem any reliable way of doing it. I could ensure only GBP cards are useable but that's not quite same thing. Not sure if just a notice "for UK only" would be legally sufficient.
2) How to stop download being available to anyone who has that link but still allow customer to try again if his download fails for some reason. How can one detect if a download has worked?
3) How to restrict number copies installed.

Anyone got any experience of this, any general tips, pitfalls etc? Cheers.

The main schemes for ensuring a limited number of installs are licensing tied to a specific piece of hardware or a hardware dongle (e.g. iLok), licensing tied to a specific machine based on some aspect of the hardware e.g. primary MAC address, IMEI number, or a combination of similar factors, and licensing which uses some sort of online activation scheme such as eek has proposed. The first one you can pretty much rule out. Personally as an end user I prefer online activation as it's less hassle when moving machines or installing on a second machine if that's allowed.

The best way to restrict access to downloads is to require people to have an account and authenticate first, although with a licensing scheme in place it's less of a problem, you could even make the downloads public but time limited without a license key.

I think if you want to restrict it to UK only users you could validate their postal address and do a geographic lookup of their IP address, although that can cause problems for people behind proxy servers in other countries, and of course people will always find a way to subvert these sorts of measures if they want to. If this restriction is due to insurance then it's probably worth asking your insurance company what they would consider reasonable, it might be that writing "UK only" into your license T&Cs will be enough.

[TheFaQQer]

1) I would like to restrict sales to UK only for insurance reasons but doesn't seem any reliable way of doing it. I could ensure only GBP cards are useable but that's not quite same thing. Not sure if just a notice "for UK only" would be legally sufficient.

I'm not sure what "insurance" issues you refer to, but if what you are after is something which means that if someone outside the UK installs it then a disclaimer should be sufficient, I would think.

2) How to stop download being available to anyone who has that link but still allow customer to try again if his download fails for some reason. How can one detect if a download has worked?

You can't check whether a download has worked successfully, You could generate a URL which is only valid for a certain amount of time and / or number of downloads. Or provide information so that the customer can email you to provide a new download copy if they need it

3) How to restrict number copies installed.

Without letting the software connect to your server and check where it has been activated when it is first loaded, then I can't think of any other way that you can do it. Whether you want your customers to have to have internet access to use the software is a different question.

[Joeman]

2) How to stop download being available to anyone who has that link but still allow customer to try again if his download fails for some reason. How can one detect if a download has worked?
3) How to restrict number copies installed.

Unique download link per sale, and Activation key that uses machinename/HDD serial number etc.

Could also have the software check the IP address of the machines its running from during the registration process to ensure its a UK based IP address...

Ofcourse nothing is 100% as there are always round stuff like this.

[xoggoth]

Loadsa great answers, ta!! As I understand it, due to dynamic addresses, there is no foolproof way of associating IP address with a country so maybe putting it in terms and conditions is the way to go. I did use to have an auto update option in the programs so know how to connect to net from .net but how reliable that would be given an unknown program and firewalls not so sure.

[TheFaQQer]

Loadsa great answers, ta!! As I understand it, due to dynamic addresses, there is no foolproof way of associating IP address with a country so maybe putting it in terms and conditions is the way to go. I did use to have an auto update option in the programs so know how to connect to net from .net but how reliable that would be given an unknown program and firewalls not so sure.

Might be worth having a tick box "I confirm that I am within the United Kingdom" or something like that, just to try and stop any inadvertent downloads.

[VectraMan]

Loadsa great answers, ta!! As I understand it, due to dynamic addresses, there is no foolproof way of associating IP address with a country so maybe putting it in terms and conditions is the way to go.

I thought the ip2Country database was meant to be pretty accurate, though there's always the possibility of somebody working for a multinational or using a proxy.

[AtW]

Country level geo-location is pretty accurate these days.

Not sure why you are concerned about insurance - better check with them, chances are so long as it is UK law you might be covered, perhaps with exclusion of Canada/USA.

If I were you I'd focus on international markets - many more customers out there can be reached, why not take advantage?

There are specialist software distribution companies that will handle purchases, can't mind names - they would take a cut of sale price, possibly 30%.