Piracy

[Dan Shafer]

Dan....

(Great name)

I think the most convenient and accepted manner is to require users  
to register the product, issue a serial number, and then store that  
serial number someplace where your program can locate it but it isn't  
part of the program itself or necessarily obvious for the user to  
copy if they try to share the program illegally.

Your program on launch would check for that file and perhaps validate  
it against an algorithm. If it doesn't find the file or the serial  
number is invalid for some reason, then you ask the user to register  
the program.

I know there are some schemes for generating serial numbers that  
drive algorithmically off the user's name or email address. Those are  
a bit more secure, probably, but they might be unnecessarily cumbersome.

Andre is of course ultimately correct; there is no foolproof way to  
prevent piracy. The best you can hope for is to make it sufficiently  
difficult or inconvenient when compared to the price of your product  
that potential pirates just don't see it being worth it to rip you off.

On Jun 13, 2005, at 9:39 AM, Dan Friedman wrote:

> Greetings!
>
> Has anyone come up with a decent way to deal with piracy?  I'm  
> getting ready
> to release a commercial application and wondered if there is anyway  
> to stop
> someone from just giving it to a friend.
>
> [I would like my application to function off-line.  So, doing a  
> look-up via
> the web is out.]
>
> Any thoughts, ideas or solutions out there?
>
> Thank you in advance,
> Dan
>
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>



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Co-Chair
RevConWest '05
June 17-18, 2005, Monterey, California
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit/RevConWest