Piracy

[Robert J. Earp]

Finally, something I can offer some advice to !!

Dan I agree with the sentiments of the other respondees to your 
question, but you've gotta do something to slow down some of the 
pirates, don't you ?

We don't do many shrink wrapped apps, but recently I was talked into 
producing a custom wine labelling thang that was going to be sold 
on-line (down-loadable) and in stores (via CD).  We used a scheme that 
seems to have had some success for us over the years, without putting 
too much hassle on the customers, although it's far from "NATO" secure!!

We use embedded code to get the drive serial number the app is loaded on 
(running from) and scramble it via an algorithm to generate a "challenge 
key", which we then ask the customer for when registering the product.  
We then have a little app in-house that generates the unlock key from 
the challenge key, this app is also a database that keeps track of whom 
has got what keys.  If it's a downloaded copy we know who purchased it 
and will log the challenge and resulting unlock keys in case somebody 
"looses" their unlock key.  With the CD version we print a randomly 
generated CD Key label (stuck /*inside */the case) and ask the customers 
for that, along with their challenge key, before we will issue an unlock 
key.  The CD Key also gets logged in the db along with customer details.

We only sell CD's to distributors and have no idea who the end customer 
is until they call us for an unlock key, so in essence, the CD Key is 
proof of purchase of the CD.

An added benefit for us is that by keeping track of who is using the s/w 
allows us to contact them should there be an update.  Of course we 
/*never */have bugs, so that's not a problem ;-)

We feel that the casual pirate will think twice before trying to get  a 
new unlock key from us, although we fully expect to allow people to move 
drives/PC's by giving them a limited number of unlock keys.

I'd willingly let you have a copy of the code/stacks (minus the 
encryption algorithm !!) but unfortunately it's written in Perl.  We did 
have a version written in ToolBook OpenScript some time ago, so it can 
be done in a script-based language with no problem.

HTH, Bob...

> 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 



-- 
Robert J. Earp - Ashford Training Technologies*
*18059 21A Avenue, South Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. V3S 9V7
T:(1)604 541 1662 Cel:(1)604 612 6688 F:(1)604 541 1686


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