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Independent Developers Fight Piracy & Lose
An anonymous reader writes "The author of the Echelon decided to take his fight against software piracy to the next level and then threw in the towel. After someone began posting new serial numbers on a well known hacking site, the author took matters into his own hands. With version 1.0, entering a hacked serial number causes the software deleted the user's Home directory. Yes, you read it right, the software completely erases it (aka rm -rf ~). A variety of people have voiced some some strong opinions on this. While some argue that piracy is good for established companies, a few large companies are battling piracy and having limited success. Small, independent developers, however, are recognising this is a serious problem and are generally stumped by what to do about it."
Anyway, this guy's product and any future products will definitely not be getting any of my money (and I certainly won't be downloading his apps).
Ha, who am I kidding, I wouldn't download it anyway. Open source all the way baby!
The bomb-code was only up for a few hours, and reputedly nobody got nailed, so why is this article in existance, anyway?
I mean, with MS you click "I Agree" to a box that says they can modify or delete anything on your PC anyway. I think the big licenses even include a "search anytime we want" language too.
Oh, wait -- This is a MAC program. They're not used to losing all their data instantly (viruses, hideous crashes... etc...)
Well, you Apple fans don't have any decent viruses yet, and you need something to share our pain...
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Perhaps grabbing files from the home directory and encrypting them. Contact the author for resolution.
Tools like these should also have a built-in sunset date. If, in fifteen years, someone is using this ancient copy of your software b/c they can't purchase it... just let it go.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I can guess how the majority of this discussion will go, so I just have one question. Why do people always try to apply the ideas of OSS to commercial software? It's like people get so used to being able to download anything they want for free that they for some reason take that set of principles and apply it to software they weren't given permission to download without paying for. That's completely the opposite of the free spirit of OSS, which is that someone is purposely giving away their effort of their own volition, and you can contribute back to it for the good of the community. Pirating doesn't contribute anything except lost sales for the people who make a living and feed their families. It's not free advertising, it's not try-before-you-buy (that's what demos are for), it is nothing more than people not wanting to pay for something. Same thing with MP3 piracy, movie piracy, etc.
Yeh, the most that would happen to me if they delete my PC's home directory is my settings, bookmarks, and a few other minor things. At most, I might need to perform a repair on SOME installs to get an app working correctly.
But I don't store anything in "My Documents," "My Pictures," or the like. Sure, some games default their saved games there, but boo hoo.
My Powerbook on the other hand, I'd have to kill someone. Seriously, I'd wring their little necks.
But I don't pirate software. I make enough money that if I need software X, I buy it, ESPECIALLY if it was designed / published by a small house.
Personally, I hate it when someone pirates software from a small software company. I mean, is it that friggin hard to pay $27 USD for "Gish" or some other delightful game gauranteed to keep you happy for days on end, or $30 USD for TextPad if you use it every day? MS Ofice I could understand (though I paid for mine), but little apps like Textpad are usually worth it.
These jerks had it coming.
I find it hard to believe that nobody has bought your software with millions of downloads. I find that a really good program gets about a 1% (ouch) download/purchase rate.
I'm working on designing my site so that the keys are available on a web-based DB. Do an MD5 on the key, and match hashes with with the one on-line at program startup. No match, no save capability. Too many people going for one key? Disable that key.
Have the program run OK if it fails once or twice in a row, but the third time, the program dies until it can check its key.
People may still be able to crack your software (No real defense against people rewriting your program...), but keygens and re-used keys become a rarity.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
"Little college dorm room kiddies will just come along and download it and then run to boards like Slashdot and justify it as "free advertising." "
Whats funny is you mention this in the terms of being a musician.
I have worked on a number of music software applications over the last few years from anything from being a beta tester to designing the GUI for guys that have a great product, but a shitty interface.
And this is this same exact arguement used everywhere -- its just free advertisement. Or if I use it to make money, I'll pay for it. Or I'm just a little guy, and the pros should have to pay since I haven't had my first hit yet.
In this area, I've *NEVER* seen a pro pay for professional music software...if you are making money off of it, you will more than likely get it given to you for free. Hell, I haven't paid for 90% of the software I've been given -- and most of it sits in its box on the shelf as the software I *USE* is almost the inverse of this (for some reason, I'm more likely to use the stuff I pay for -- it has real value to me).
But the thinking goes, being a paid musician is like winning a spot on a basketball team -- there are only so many spots opening a year, and most likely its not going to be you. So the software is given to the professionals to advertise to the little guys...I don't know how many times folks will come to my studio and ask what I'm using, only to run out and buy it thinking that it means they can leave me outta the mix, so to speak...only to realize you can't buy talent out of a box -- it comes from years of hard work.
So honestly, the software is sold entirely to the guys that can't make a buck and most likely will never make a buck. Great guys -- and a lot with real talent, but really don't want to do anything but play on weekends with a bunch of friends.
Anywho, the companies advertise as they feel like advertising and need no help from anyone else. I wish there was a decent way to prevent piracy but the folks that want everyone elses hardwork without doing anything for it want to be rebels. Its like the fuckwad kids that think stealing their instruments make them an authentic punk band even though they are from the suburbs.
I love free software and have contributed to some of it -- in my day job we give away several packages I've solely designed and developed, but all in all, folks need to respect the opinion of those that provided the software...even if there were no laws preventing the copying of software or music or whatever, you'd think folks would have the decency to understand that if someone creates something they should have the ultimate say on how its used. If ya don't like that, you are free to develop your own...its not like the ideas are that hard to come up with, and an army of OSS programmers should be able to replicate anything who can give their software away under the ideals they wish it to be released...
It's quite common for me to loose the original packaging (and the SN#) to a game, and then get a serial number from online. I still have the CD.
Now if my hard drive were trashed by such a program, I would sue (yeah, it's probably in the EULA that they can do that, but there's a good chance that such a clause will be neemed null and void).
In normal (non-internet) society, such an action would be the revenge a phycho would extract by killing the person sleeping with his girlfriend.
The game floppy had its write-protect notch covered, as with most commercial software. We played around with the disk, changed some things, and then tried to run the game.
It turns out that the very first thing the program did was to attempt to format the floppy disk!! Of course, for most users nothing happened, because of the write-protect tab. But we had to go back to the store to get another copy. (First thing we did after that was to take out the format command.)
We were annoyed but respectful.
yo.
The best anti-piracy serial number solution I've seen was one (I can't remember the program) that, when you entered a known pirated serial number, it said "You just entered a pirated serial number. I know I can't stop you, but I can sure make you feel guilty. You can use the program now withouth the nagging now, you cheap bastard" (Or similar, it's been a while.)
It worked. I decided to delete the program until I could convince work to buy it for me. (New job, so the copy stayed with them.) I've never looked at pirating serial numbers the same since. I try hard to get work to buy the smaller software companies stuff that I use, or I delete it, or look for freeware so at least I'm being cheap but without the guilt.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
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Your software *thinks* I pirated it, ergo it can do anything it wants and get away with it? Nuh uh. What happens when a pirate releases a keygenned key that happens to match mine? What happens when I hit a bug in the key verification code? What happens when a cosmic ray flips a bit in the relevent code and a FALSE turns into TRUE?
Says who? Based on what evidence? I pirated it, saw that it sucked, and then did exactly what I would have done anyway; I didn't buy it. Did they lose $60 on me anyway? Maybe they would have if I'd cancelled my preorder based on that, but then I'm just using my increased knowledge of the products available to spend my money more wisely. Is that still a bad thing? Maybe for Id, but not for me, and I don't think for the market either; mindless shooters with crappy atmosphere and insanely repetetive gameplay should not a blockbuster make.
Kindly provide statistics and sources that show more and more people are pirating software, and that as a result the amount of purchased software is going down. Or are you just assuming that's what's happening?
This actually isn't a new idea. I remember an early version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for DOS) that did something like this. If the program thought it had been pirated, it deleted its main .exe files. This forced you to have to re-install it (assuming you were the legal owner), but didn't damage any of your data or other programs.
At the time, they weren't using serial numbers as copy control. The floppy had some kind of copy protection on it (a "diskcopy" wouldn't work), and it wrote some files in the install directory that were marked system and read-only. You couldn't touch these files. If they got moved by a defrag program (for example), the program would zap itself. (I found that out the hard way. It was not mentioned anywhere in the manual.)
Doing this is probably the only legally defendable kind of destructive copy-protection. If the user pirates your software, he has done something illegal. That does not give you the right to do something illegal back to him. If he has no right to run your software in the first place, then there's nothing wrong with your software deleting itself, since he shouldn't have it in the first place.
As with my example above, when implementing destructive copy-protection, you must be very careful to make sure it won't backfire on legitimate users. I did own a legal copy of Lotus 1-2-3, which I had installed from the original disks. I didn't know that allowing the file to be moved by my defragger would cause the program to think it was pirated. Suppose Lotus had decided to delete my data files (no "home directory" on DOS) instead of just the 123 program? Then I would have lost my data even though I was a legitimate owner of the program and I was doing nothing wrong, according to the software manual. As it was, instead of losing my data, I only lost about half an hour of time performing a re-install.