I know someone that made an online product. A lot of people have paid for it, but now, his server decided to go crazy and if the server doesn't shut down, files get corrupted. If he could make a torrent containing the files, his server would get an easier life.

The problem though is that he doesn't want anyone that haven't paid for the product to download it. Is there a way to add a password to the torrent? Or make the server validate each peer based on if they paid for the files?

The way it works right now: users registered an account on his site. They paid using PayPal. When the payment is validated, they can download the files from their account.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 23 2011, 12:44 pm by Apos. Reason: Changed the title and description

I'd imagine having a validated login or something would make it possible. Basically, the players can download the application without restriction, but to do much more than look at the files, they need to provide a login that links to a paid account.

Though this brings into question piracy. There is always a way to make an otherwise pay-to-play game free, it just depends on how much effort it takes to crack.

Pack it into a winzip/winrar/7zip archive and password protect it. Then give the pw only to paying customers. He could change the password frequently to avoid spreading the pw.

That could work I believe, he is already distributing it with 7z anyways.

Here is the site for those wondering: http://www.blendtuts.com/e-store

Problem is, the second you unprotect the archive you could just pass it over to your friend. Need some kind of authentication inside the program itself.

The problem is less the passing to friends which is fairly limited but the danger of getting redistributed over torrent without password.

And yes, for that I would recommend an authentication inside the program. For example make it install itself and then generate a random value which is the seed for a web based key generator integrated in your friend's site. The customers then enter this random value on your friend's website using their account and receive the key with which they can unlock the program.
You can then decide how many free activations you give your customers (for people who have/want to reinstall it) until they have to request a new activation via email. If it's a video or pictures (tutorials, right?) and not a program then he has to encrypt them and deliver a viewer program that is key protected.

It seems like most of the people that bought the product will not be okay with a torrent download. He decided to create two alternative download. It will take a few hours before it's fully uploaded. (The full thing is a bit more than 5gb divided between 9 archived files.)

Welcome to the problem of software pirating =P

Just make the software distribute via P2P the same way the Blizzard downloader does things.

Allow everyone to download it but have some kind of verification system like logging into an account or entering in some code

Well, he ended up buying an account on Megaupload. Then, he protected his files with a password (You can do that from the website.). And he sent the links as an email to everyone. I've used Megaupload before, so I thought it would take forever to download, but I managed to get all the 5gb within an hour. Though I don't know what happened, 7z gave me about 35 errors while extracting. Only one of the video was left intact.

He also set up an alternative download link to use if Megaupload failed. But I got 27 errors with that one... I guess the best solution would be to make the videos work online from our accounts. Then, put a link so we can download the videos separately.