Identifying piracy?

[deadowl]

I'm working on a game, and when I get to the point where I'm taking contributions of code/graphics/levels and the like, I'm -extremely- worried, and for good reason, that some things coming in may be pirated. What I was wondering is if there were any free tools that could be used to identify pirated material (in particular, graphics).

[LaRoza]

What do you mean exactly?

[deadowl]

What do you mean exactly?

I pretty much want to be able to catch players submitting graphics copied from other games that are formatted in such a sense as to work with the game I'm in the process of making.

[LaRoza]

I pretty much want to be able to catch players submitting graphics copied from other games that are formatted in such a sense as to work with the game I'm in the process of making.

Have them verify the source?

[deadowl]

How can you verify the source of any given file in this day in age?

I mean, something that will scan places X, Y and Z, and try to match images based on similarity.

With audio and video fingerprinting becoming more prominent, this should easily exist somewhere.

[Compyx]

Ask them to submit work-stages, that's we way we do it in the C64-demoscene with graphics-compo's.

[deadowl]

Ask them to submit work-stages, that's we way we do it in the C64-demoscene with graphics-compo's.

That's actually an excellent idea. Thanks for the help.

[lisati]

Perhaps there's a way of using the tags in some popular file formats as part of the verification process. Photos I take on the digital cameras I have access to store, amongst other things, the camera model, which could be matched against a previously filled-in questionaire. The down side is that some thought might need to be given to how to spot forgeries.