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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."
- Delete Perl
- Stop Apache, Samba, & nfsd and remove their startup scripts.
- Delete X
- Delete ftp, grep, ssh, or other important programs.
The key is to piss off the user. Each of these things are replaceable, but a PITA.That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I guess FADE is something comparable. But it didn't get out of the realm of the game (Operation Flashpoint in this case), but simply degraded controls and ammunition inside the game. It proved not to hold long (as any protection), but I think it enouraged some people to buy the game they liked.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Imagine the developers face when he realizes that he forgot a ! in his if statement, while testing that piece of code.
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!
Instead of deleting the files, they should encrypt the files.
:-)))))))
The decryption key will be provided when the product is registered.
-Mike
and by accident nukes the home dir? is there any responsibility from the part of the software designer?
Deleting a user's home directory is a bad idea. It's not portable. How about those poor folks running Windows 9x. They don't have proper home directories. Even the ones in WinXP are half-baked. You'd have to build in a routine that'll erase the C:\ drive for those poor saps.
It seems that this would break some law or other. Mantraps are quite illegal, and while the stakes are not as high, this is conceptually the exact same thing.
First, at least he didn't start emailing parts of the user's mailspool to address book entries!
I always thought it was kind of ironic when the small people back the groups like SPA / BSA. Those "industry" groups represent those who fund them, and AFAIK will do nothing for the little guy. They are funded by the big players.
There have been a few other similiar cases. I believe one of the popular Windows CD recording packages would burn garbage CDs if you entered the wrong serial number, or entered one of the popular serial numbers found on google.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
I too have been stung by rampant piracy, however I would never do what these authors did for fear of the potential legal and ethical problems it could cause to knowingly sabotage someone's system. In my case the software in question is Net Weasel, a small HTML editor that has had millions of downloads, has several thousand active users bugging me for support and zero registrations (that's right, not a single person willing to pony up any money). Yet people still email me claiming to have a legitimate copy and demanding that I fix bugs or release a new version. As it happens I do have an updated version I use myself and I'm working on a 2.0, but until I come up with a way to stop people from writing cracks its just not worth my time to release. I'm already compressing and encrypting the executable, there's a point when the copy protection gets to be a bigger project then the application itself.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I'd love to read his license agreement.
If anyone lost any critical data due to this 'feature', there could be serious consequences. I'm not sure if rm -rf ~ on OSX makes the files unrecoverable, but the author ought to be liable to pay to recover the data.
In fact, simply writing the software may have been illegal.
If someone steals some CDs from you, you don't have the right to burn their house down.
And, as a matter of fact the software in question may have been violating the GPL. It was basically a front-end to FFMPEG, which is GPL'd, and it may have come bundled with it.
So basically the guy wrote an easy to use front end to some free software, and then trashed people's work when he stopped getting money from it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Echelon - Redifining the Meaning of BOFH (or perhaps BDFH?)
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
UNIX/Linux Consulting
The author wrote and distributed a program with malicious intent and should be convicted of whichever computer-related offenses are most appropriate. Perhaps probation would be preferable to jail time, but I see no way to excuse this person's behavior.
Any software developer with even a remote sense of reality realized long, long ago that preventing piracy is impossible. Make a product that people are willing to pay for, and they will pay for it. That's the best you can do.
I'm a professional software developer myself and while the software I work on isn't piracy prone, I'd never go this far.
Disable your own software, do bad encodes, draw goatse/tubgirl images on the encodings, but dont, DONT mess with files that doesn't belong to your program.
This is just plain immature, not to mention very wrong.
And yes, it seems like the author already removed it, but putting it there in the first place is bad.
I've read that adding timebombs to commercial binaries was potentially illegal. Wouldn't willful destruction of property (rm -rf ~) be even worse as victims would have an easier claim for damages?
I have some mixed feelings about piracy. I believe that, at the core, software piracy is morally reprehensible (sorry about using the term piracy for those of you that quibble about that, but it is the term used in the summary).
As a software developer, I feel that I ought to get paid for the work I do. I do work for a company that pays me to develop, so it's really their responsibility to make sure their software isn't pirated (if they want to protect their business).
Nevertheless, I feel that piracy can be benefically to any company, regardless of size. I think that it may even help smaller companies more than larger companies, because piracy may be the vehicle in which a particual software package becomes very popular. However, one has to realize that 100% of software can't be pirated, otherwise nobody would develop anything meaningful (excepting the free software movement, but that's something pretty special [and I do wholeheartedly support it, even with LOC when I can]--I am speaking in a manner of business). Like most things in economics, it probably requires the right critical mass (you need to have the right number/ratio of people buying your software to make you profitable, but you need to have a certian number/ratio of people pirating it to make it popular).
I never think that software should ever use measures that destroy your property (digital or otherwise) as a means to prevent piracy. I am glad that the author of the software mentioned above took out the folder deleting technique--I cannot believe he did that in the first place.
The one point this guy makes is that piracy does hurt the small niche programmer.
I have always been amazed that the large companies probably get a big benefit from releasing their software into world... people learn to use and depend on it... and eventually as the rep gets better, then sales improved.
However, I have no doubt that piracy has really hurt programmers like this guy. He reports a 30% decrease in sells. I can understand why he is so desperate.
Do two wrongs make a right?
If you know a kid is going to steal a coke, is it okay to put poision in that coke?
I don't know what is morally right or wrong, but I can understand why this guy is so worried.
AlexTheBeast
I was impressed. I was maybe 16, and I wasn't necessarily using keygens because I hated companies or wanted to be malignant, I just had no money. This was the first program that had been able to detect a keygen'd serial. So, I actually bought a license for bpftp... (it was cheap anyway).
Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but I had to hand it to 'em. It's a respect thing, I guess.
Or maybe it was just adolescent "logic" running through my head. Nowadays it seems kind of dumb. Oh well, thank god I don't use windows anymore.
The system I use with my applications is:
Client-server architecture, you login once with a CDKEY. Everytime the program runs, it sends your IP and cdkey to a server.
Now if TOO MANY PEOPLE use a CDKEY, you can cancel it out... Then when people login with that CDKEY they see,"You are using a pirated CDKEY, please get a legitamate one. Email X@X.com"
Sure advanced hackers can skip past the client-server authentication, but its tough and they need to do it for every released version. For the most part people are stumbled here.
Good points:
1)You can track if your software is being pirated at all.
2)You cut people off who have used your software, so its like a free trial and if they like it, they can pay you for a copy... And they may not have bought the software to begin with.
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
If the author of the software had simply deleted the software itself, or disabled it in some way, this could be acceptable, but deleting a user's home directory goes WAAAAY over the line.
A good general guideline for ethical behavior in CS is theACM Code of ethics. This violates several points, including:
1.2 Avoid harm to others.
1.3 Be honest and trustworthy.
1.7 Respect the privacy of others.
(1.2 is the most applicable here, I think)
Rather than spend a considerable amount of time and effort in a vain attempt to foil copyright violators, try simply putting out a decent product at a fair price. Those who are honest (who, I think, are most of us) will be willing to pay for something they believe is fairly priced, and those who are dishonest won't be willing to pay for something no matter what -- they'll do everything in their power to illicitly copy it instead.
Honestly, I suspect that the return on the money wasted on fighting copyright infringement by fringe elements is far less than the amount actually spent fighting it.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
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.
Make your software behave in such a way no one is willing to use it and then no one will pirate it!
Seriously, this is not the first time a program detects a hacked serial key and then [insert some behaviour], though this is the worst measure I have ever heard of.
Windows XP for instance doesnt allow you to install SP1 if you are using one of a few leaked keys.
IIRC, CDRWIN (a cd-burning program) would slowly 'degrade' your burns over time if you used an invalid key. Very insiduous, as it would seem to work at first then slowly get worse and worse.
What if you mis-type in your valid serial and the program thinks it now matches a banned key? Whoops!
If you insist on deleting something on the detection of a hacked serial, then trash the programs binary, *not* the users whole home directory. That's just assanine.
I'm a big supporter of free software, and am totally against software piracy. A contradiction? No SIR!
Free software depends on adherence by users to an agreement with the developers not to illegally use the software in a proprietary manner. If we expect people to abide by free software licenses, we have to abide by commercial software licenses too.
In my opinion, the only thing he did wrong was to not put a clause into his license that when the user clicks on it specifically authorizes the code to delete the home directory if it chooses to.
Stop stealing music, software, etc. while at the same time expecting free software to remain free. It's hypocrisy.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
What happens if you enter a serial number incorrectly and it triggers the "hacked" serial code that deletes your files?
And what about a random bug in the software that could end up doing the same?
Personally, I wouldn't even consider running a piece of software that has the capacity to delete all my stuff.
Wouldn't it make more sense to hit a webpage and save the ip number or something?
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.
No matter if they killed your dog first, if you kill theirs back in revenge you'll just as culpable as they are.
On the other hand, I can understand the difficult situation of small companies defending theirselves (we've also had to deal with similar situations lately).
I just don't accept this course of action. It just doesn't make him any different. Acting like this just proves his ignorance and inability to come up with a suitable defense (has not to be perfect, just enough to generate some reasonable income).
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
This may be a troll, but I'll bite. Just because something is in writing, doesn't mean it's legit or legal! I could put a clause in my EULA saying "If you read this, I can take all your money and all your children's money", but that doesn't make it legal or enforceable.
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
Anti-piracy sabotoge has been around for a long time - it dates back to the days of some manufacturers using 5.25 inch floppies that included an unused disk track containing sandpaper - attempting to copy the master disk would result in moving the floppy read head over the sandpaper covered track, thus destroying it.
This was stopped for probably the same reasons as discussed in the home security thread regarding booby traps. Destroying somebody's PC is illegal, even if they are making illegal copies of your software. Besides, what if they were using somebody else's PC to do it? And who would want to purchase a product that could destroy your PC if you make a mistake? Kind of like purchasing a car with a built in self-destruct as an anti-theft device. God help you if it malfunctions.
My rights don't need management.
It simply moves it into /tmp/.
/tmp/ is cleaned and the data is lost.
When the user reboots, however,
Pokey The Penguin!
No, that is not true. A license cannot violate the laws of your country, and in the U.S. a license cannot take away any of your constitutional rights.
A provision in a license does not give someone superpowers over you. The only remedy legally available to software distributors/makers/developers that have users who are breaking the terms of the license is: termination of the license. There is no way to legally destroy files on a user's machine no matter what they have done to you.
-Jem
Spending time trying to convert them into customers is completely wasted. Stop them from using your program with a perfect protection scheme, and all they'll do is use a different program.
Do it in a rediculous manner like this joker, and all you're going to do is drive away your legitimate customers. I wouldn't pay for this thing in a million years. Who knows what crap this thing could pull in the future? All it takes is one bug, and suddenly it thinks legit users are pirates...
This stunt he pulled has caused far more loss of sales for him than any software piracy.
Offer the codes for free. This way you get out of the extortion issue.
However, in order to get the code, the person in question must prove their own identity... Opening themselves to criminal and civil charges.
I like that.
InThane
Okay, so the person didn't have permission to use the software. I can certainly understand the urge to do something like this.
However, consider the consequences. The publisher could get sued. Sure, he probably will (might?) win, but it costs money to defend. Oops, there goes more profit. The publisher loses goodwill (hard to define-but not all publicity is good publicity....). Oh, and maybe the publisher gets hacked/cracked by someone he has pissed off (people pirating software may not have the strongest morals/ethics/logic but some may be good at computers). Oops. There goes more profit.
In short, I see a lot of downside and little upside. And I sure as heck wouldn't want to use a product as a LEGITIMATE user if I knew it was designed to screw up my system (even if only for illegitimate users).
What ever happened to just not working when a bad S/N is entered? Not producing garbage output or destroying files, but just not working. If you're going to take the approach of pissing off the user, where's the justification in vandalizing the system to do it? Unless the programmer is trying to invite up-close-and-personal criticism.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
If you know a kid is going to steal a coke, is it okay to put poision in that coke?
I think a better analogy is: if you know a kid is going to steal a coke, is it okay to put laxatives in that coke, along with a sign on the coke saying "if you didn't pay for this it has laxatives in it"?
MORTAR COMBAT!
Bad Idea if you end up hurting a paying customer.
Back in about '82 an acquaintance bought a C64, floppy drive and accounting software. Painstakingly entered data for his employees, customers etc. Took him about 2 weeks of hunt and peck. Program ran great for about a month and then one day when he loaded it up, his master data file had every record replaced with "PIRATE","PIRATE","PIRATE"...
It turned out that the copy protection could be triggered by a slightly misaligned drive head. The program thought it was a pirated copy and activated its anti-piracy code. OOPS!
Buddy was not impressed, since it cost him much time and money. After several nasty letters from lawyers the developer ended up having to pay to have the data re-entered, as well as supplying a version of the software without the anti-pirate code.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Anyone remember Jeff Arnold's CDRWIN program? His program was popular years ago for its ability to copy Playstation games. As his program became popular target for pirates, he implemented something similar. But as I recall, the user outrage was enormous, and he had to remove the new "feature". Even then, people didn't trust his software for a long time afterwards.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
There's only so much you can (and should) do with software. Even the boys in Redmond have a line item to deal with lost sales due to hacked code - it's simply a fact of life that not everyone is going to be a paying customer; it's a cost of doing business.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Seriously. It's much easier to pirate some games than to buy it. The amount of inconvenience involved in running the legal product is sometimes quite amazing.
For example, recently I bought Neverwinter Nights and both expansions. Previoulsly I had the pirated NWN, but of course I couldn't play online with it. So after I found I in fact like it, I bought two copies of NWN + SoU, and then a HotU one too.
Installing it on Linux was a bit unintuitive, but I can live with that. Next problem was that the font of the CD key was illegible, and "A", "R", and "O", "D" and "0" look the same. Just great, with a pirated CD it installs directly, and with the legal one I need to spend 15 minutes trying to figure out which is the right key. And what if I happen to find another valid one, but which is not mine?
For the SoU expansion, Bioware forgot to include some background music. The sad thing about this is that the pirate copy of SoU probably comes with the sound files on the CD, or at least it's something that could be easily done.
Then there are some games in which copy protection goes to ridiculous levels, like installing special drivers. I *hate* this kind of crap, which is almost all the games I play are on Linux, where this stuff hopefully will never become common.
This type of action is a bit like a war. Bombing an apparently guilty party may make you feel better, and maybe even act as a deterrent to others.
However, there will be innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. And the author is giving up the moral (and in some jurisdictions the legal) high ground.
I somehow doubt, that this software behaviour will increase his sales - possibly the opposite might happen, i.e. sales will tank, because legitimate users might be afraid to be caught in the crossfire. So while he may be able to re-appear (or have the software re-appear) under a different name, he therefore would lose the goodwill associated with his and the current software name.
It is very understandable that someone reacts harshly to being under attack, but it does not necessarily make it the wisest thing to do, even for oneself.
I wonder if there was a warning. If BEFORE prompting user for a serial number there is a BIG RED warning stating that entering a "stolen" serial number will DELETE ALL YOUR DATA, then may be, just may be, I can see this as a legitimate, if boneheaded method. Of course if it were me, I'd cancel the installation and put this guy on a mental blacklist forever - who wants to deal with an a-hole. Still, that method would at least be remotely legal. As it stands, lots of you have said it before but I'll repeat it - erasing private data is a crime, period.
Ah, on the topic of cost of software. The interesting thing is that software market is NO MARKET AT ALL! To be a market, one has to be provided with choices of a product doing substantially similar things with prices set by supply and demand and some competition to boot.
Often in software there is no choice - there is one product doing one thing and sold at a fixed price set by developers. When there is a true choice of products, prices still don't seem to be set by the market. Rather, developers randomly set the price and users excercise their market power by pirating (i.e. leveragint their fear of illegal action or acting immorally vs. the cost being too high for functionality provided.) Want to reduce pirating - auction your software. The real price will be found very soon, but it will very likely be a lot lower then $20 most seem to be asking for. BTW, $20 is an astronomical price for all but the most complicated software packages geared for ahome user. I would bet that market set prices would be somwhere between 5 cents and 2$.
There was a bug in the vBuild component of InstallShield last summer which could result in an accidental `rm -rf ~`. After being bitten by it once (fortunately I noticed the disk activity before it deleted anything for which I didn't have backups), I helped to track down the problem; apparently at one point there was a "mkdir /cachedir; cd /cachedir; rm -rf *" (or rather, the equivalent in C) and they never checked the return codes of the first two operations.
So, to everyone who is asking "what if he made a mistake?": Mistakes can result in data loss even if you don't intend to delete anyone's data.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
First off I am dumbfounded that you have not sold a single copy of your software :( It looks really nice though and I'm sure if I had a need for an HTML editor I would consider your software!
But I believe we already have some glowing examples of effective anti-piracy measures:
#1) Counter-strike. The video game. Yes, Valve's CD-KEY system actually works here because in order to play the game you have to connect to a server. To be able to connect to a server your CDKEY has to match one of the keys in their database. To be able to play your EXE cannot be cracked/modified as MD5 checksums stop you from joining. I'm sure there are ways around this but I haven't read about anyone who has effectively cracked this mechanism for multiplayer yet. MMORPGs are another good example.
#2) Windows. Microsoft gave up on focusing on the individual user a long, long time ago as Bill Gates realized the real money isn't in individual sales as much as it is in contracts with pc manufacturers to have windows preloaded on new PCs. It would be a little harder for DELL to put a pirated copy of Windows XP on every single computer they sell, so Microsoft eliminates piracy here by making the user buy Windows before they get the computer. Of course, there are ways around this too.
#3) Extreme dongles. Forcing the users to attach a dongle to the computer while running the program makes things harder on the crackers. Not impossible to crack, but more effective then not having it.
But overall the most effective copy protections involve some sort of online "serial # check" or program integerity check of some kind. Since your users are web developers then they'll most likely be online anyways this may work. But another poster pointed out that as long as you are letting people download a "time limited trial version" that unlocks by simply entering a serial code then you've got a problem since the most effective crack is to simply fool your program into thinking trial mode never ends.
It may be better to just distribute a "crippled" version that cannot unlock and let people who buy the software get an "unlocked version" that pings you with a serial number. You start to see 2 serials pinging you, then you block the serial and tell the owner to contact you for a new #, etc.
Course people will think your software is spying on them by pinging back to you.. so definetely go out of your way to explain whats going on to the user.
Good luck!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
1) The shareware can charge whatever price they feel is right. If the price is too high then nobody will register. It is the shareware author's choice.
2) If you have a copy of the software that does not work as you expect it, then DON'T BUY IT, and don't ask for support. If you use the software then buy it! It is that simple.
3) Piracy has NO justifications whatsoever. If you don't like it, use open source and don't pay a cent. But don't pirate because you are a cheap ass.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
often I have used "cracked" codes because the feature I wanted to use was not in the "free trial" version. So I am a legit user, but I am using a "cracked" code. So how is it right I am to be treated as a criminal?
I sent the developers of ReGet Deluxe 20 bucks because I found it to be the "absolut" best download manager for windows. Unfortunately those wacky russians have decided I never paypal'd them that twenty bucks at all and have denied me support for quite some time. As a result I felt no unease at all about using cracked versions of their software.
Of course, now that I no longer rely on windows they have been replaced by a very nice OSS package - RIP ReGet.) Quite frankly, I think ANY developer nowdays who tries to sell "consumer software" and worries about piracy is not too much different than, say, Dow suing that farmer in canada for growing "their" rape (or is it wheat?) when the seed blew in from neighboring pastureland.
There is so much open source software nowdays it's becoming harder to find "shareware" that ISN'T in some way based at least partly on OSS. I have no qualms with someone trying to make a living writing software, I just think they need to choose their market carefully. Nowhere in our law does it PROMISE you an income simply for offering something for sale, and there are limits to how far one is allowed to go to "police" behavior.
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
Software developers that have a problem with piracy are making an incorrect assumption. And that is that anything other than a small fraction of their user base is willing to pay. They are, incorrectly, looking at the number of downloads, comparing that to the number of sales, and are seeing the difference as losses. They are not. I personally would never pay for Echelon. I may download it and use it if free, but if I had to pay for it, then it drops below my radar of things-I-want-to-do. Or, some other developer has a 30 day trial I can use. The point is, some random small shareware app very rarely does something Im willing to consider paying money for. 90% of things like echelon I download Ill run once, think "thats cute" then totally forget about. Im not willing to spend $10 or more a time simply because Im curious about something. Sheesh, Why these software authros think that their tool is going to become an indispensible part of my life such that I need to pay for it. Crikey. Anyway, if shareware authors stopped lamentin gthe rampant "piracy", which is users of their software who would never buy it anyway, and concentrated instead on expanding the base of paying users, then they just might get somewhere.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How illegal would it to be to have systems with pirated serial numbers produce trashed output files? If the Echelon developer was really cruel, the Mpegs could be good for a few megabytes, so the preview would be okay (along with a quick check of the video).
I admit that deleting the root directory is too far and I would agree encrypting somebody's files but surely a program using a pirated serial number could not be expected to work properly?
Maybe they could even catch a few pirates that asked for support for the "defective" software!
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Shouldn't the subject line for this story read "Independent Developer Fight Piracy & Loses it?
You know guys, trying to delete the user's home directory or messing with them in other ways might seem clever, but what if they decide to run their program in a chroot jail?
Dear Slashdot,
I'm an independent car manufacturer. The cars I build are licensed to be driven only by the purchaser. Sort of like the airline industry selling non-transferable, non-refundable tickets. Recently I have been losing money to transporation pirates who loan their cars to friends. They keep defeating whatever user-identifying technology I build into the cars. Based on one new car purchase per unauthorized transport, I estimate that I lose $400 billion annually to these pirates.
I've already bribed Orrin Hatch to make it illegal to drive somebody else's car. I even got Congress to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to install anti-piracy, I mean anti-terrorism cameras on every freeway overpass, to photograph people driving other people's cars, in case they're terrorists. Transportation pirates soon discovered they could simply wear a paper mask of the car owner's face. Some driver-id protestors even wear opaque, featureless masks when they drive their own cars. I've tried randomly suing people, but the shock value wore off pretty quickly and I barely recovered my legal costs. But at least I proved that I'm right.
Accepting that my business model doesn't work in today's world and going into another line of business is not an option. I don't want to face reality, I want to change the world to be the way I want it to be, regardless of the side effects. I also want everybody to be on my side and admit that I'm right. What should I do?
Totally illegal to set any sort of mechanical traps like that, BUT, there's a nifty loophole, it's called "rottweiler". Totally legal and effective in most cases.
Seriously. Deleting a users data as direct revenge for him using a hacked serial is WRONG!
And in any case 2 wrongs don't make a right.
P.S. It wouldn't be the first time that I use a serial number from internet for a software I purchased, just because I forgot, lost or temporarily misplaced the original codes. Which by the way is a perfectly legal thing to do.
And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
Besides, if you mess with my data, you better run god-damit!
No, I think in real-world terms, the psycho would, instead, leave you alive and kill all your friends, family and acquaintances.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
We went the route of requiring licenese certificates. Since our business model is subscription-based, we issue software certificates that are good for about one month. (depending on the contract and payment terms)
Getting a certificate is an automated, push-button process - we made it as easy as humanly possible.
But, we didn't stop there. We decided to capitalize on this certificate process, and in fact perform a full backup of the user's database, along with publishing software updates.
Further, we allow them to use their software on any computer or any number of computers. We don't restrict when and where, or on what computers they can install the software, and everywhere the user goes, their data follows.
It's an ASP business model, with a sort of "rent-a-software" hosted application twist. Since we bill by the data size, we really don't care. And the benefits are enormous.
1) Since we keep redundant backups of the users' data, it's not a big deal if the user's computer crashes or is stolen.
2) We get paid for providing quality software.
3) Customers are happy to see software updates when hooking up to backup their data and get a new certificate.
4) Customers love the freedom to work on whatever computer and at whatever location they desire.
Just recently, we had a user in tears on the phone, thanking us for providing this service. Her computer had been thoroughly hosed by a worm, and she lost all her data. 100%, and no backups - months worth of work gone forever. Except for the extensive work she'd done with our software product. Because of the frequent backups obtained with the re-certifying of her software, we had a recent backup of all her stuff on our servers and she was able to recover it automatically!
Product registration is a pain in the 4ss, but you can either hate it, or find some way to make it really worthwhile to the consumer.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You can't buy a car and the clone a million time.
perception is reality
When the RIAA proposes destroying people's stuff when they discover somebody who's pirated their music, everybody in the discussion is outraged.
When a software write actually tries to destroy people's stuff when people pirate his program, half the people in the discussion cheer him on.
Now, I know that slashdot's readership is a big group with diverse opinions. Even so, the sheer volume in both cases is staggering, and I'd have a hard time believing that there is no overlap.
Can't you people see past your noses? It's the same thing, and equally wrong in both cases.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
> The publisher could get sued.
More like -will- get sued.
I'd gladly admit to one count of copyright voilation and pay my dues if I could at the same time prove he deleted a million or two dollars worth of IP from my account.
Then on top of it, toss in any/all new malware and trojan horse laws at him, add a pinch of whatever they are calling 'cyber terrorism' nowadays, mix, stir, sit back and laugh all the way to the bank.
Worst part for the author about this, his software is 'out there'. It's not something he can easily take back.
One could spend a few months cleaning up any piracy connections they have, building/collecting this few million dollars in ligit IP, and install his software knowing what will happen. Its alot harder to prove someone isnt stupid than it is to prove this software author intended for his program to do this.
About the only recourse is posting a warning on his site that whichever version this is is seriously broken and will (read; WILL) cause damage to your system.
I'm sure there are even courts that will not look favourably at that, based fully on his intent.
Dude seriously needs some perspective.
It may feel good to pump 12 rounds into an unarmed tresspasser, but comon...
For those who didn't want to RTFA
This post below is from one of the developers friends. It's mostly a sob story about how broke the developer is. If you didn't bother to read the app automates encoding movie files which is, I must admit, a cool thing to write. The windows world doesn't have much of this. discreet makes Cleaner (purchased from Terran) but it costs way more then $20. For the price it really is a decent piece of ware. the closest the windows world has is TMPEG but last I checked it doesn't work with nearly as many formats (divx, etc).
"I happen to know the developer in question, and while I don't agree with what he did, I empathize with his frustration over this whole matter. He's spent many months getting ready for this release, and the next day, some brainless low-life had reverse-engineered his serial gen code, and released several working serials for it. Since the numbers were posted, registrations for his app completely stopped, and he's now facing the grim situation of possibly halting all development on this very useful program. He's in debt, and broke, and getting nothing for all his hard work. Seeing all his hard work getting flushed down the toilet made him understandably angry, and he was mainly trying to get revenge on the cracker, and to scare people away from attempting to pirate his software. That being said, he's already seen the error in his ways (so to speak), and the current build of his app has the home directory wiping code removed. If you download it now, the serials won't work, but it won't wipe your home directory anymore. He's contemplating less drastic measures, and new ways to protect his app, but won't be destroying user data anymore, even if they are just pirates. I think this was something that was done in the heat of the moment, in the frustration of seeing the thoughtless acts of a cracker destroy his income from this work, and went a bit overboard. I wouldn't be so hard on him, as I'm sure it's something many developers have thought of doing, and wished they had the balls to actually carry through. I think many in his position would have done something similar. At this point, the offending code is gone, and the pirates' data is safe, however the future of the (extremely useful) app is very uncertain, as registrations have all but stopped. I hope he doesn't have to stop development due to lack of support, but the actions of that cracker who shall not be named may well have forsaken this app's future."
Posted by: WiseWeasel on September 7, 2004 04:51 AM
Another of the developers friends fingers the cracker in another post
"C'mon. As its been stated, the scheme in question only targeted the cracker (iDave) and his cronies...and the specific serials created. What's more, since slava misreported this, the app didn't really delete the home directory; it obfuscated it. Only by further PIRATE THIEF ACTION would it actually have been wiped."
Posted by: JackHandy on September 7, 2004 12:25 PM
Here's a scenario that has happened to me a couple times:
I download something and either a) discover that the demo is too crippled to get a real feel for whether the software is worth the money, or b) I run it the first time and then don't have time to get back to it before the demo period expires. I have been known, on such occasions to grab an illicit serial number. If I like the software, though, I buy it. I mean, really, software from small developers is so cheap, why not buy it? A couple hundred bucks can by a lot of nifty little tools, or one big bloated MS product. I'll gladly give the small guy my money. But...
If one of the above scenarios were to occur to me and the software decided to delete my home directory in response, well, I would be inclined to put a severe dent in the developer's head.
My three cents.
// This is not a sig.
I have to agree with those who think that kind of "check the server" security is a kiss of death for software. Remember all the hoopla about Windows Activation? There was some foundation, which people seem to have forgotten, to the concern.
If Microsoft was a smaller company (and here we are talking about tiny shareware companies) I would be concerned about the fact that you can install XP for only 30 days without activation. After that it goes dark. Now if Microsoft stops activating people's XP installations, you had better have your money in hand. [I am aware that corporations use a activation-less version: there is a reason it was demanded]. Unlikely, due to the size of the company and the backlash they would get, but...
If TinyOneManShop goes under, I'm basically out my money. In this case it is $20, which probably wouldn't cause many tears. However, there are several games I bought on-line a while back. My machine got blown away and I replaced it. Put the games back on the new machine, but there was no way to actually play them because... suprise, they went out of business. Now I'm out $100 for entertainment product which no longer entertains. Or does anything. That pisses me off.
Now look at a company like Macromedia. I refuse to purchase the newer versions of their software because they are playing this exact game. Well, that's all well and good as long as Macromedia doesn't decide to use it as a method of forced upgrades ("Sorry, your software doesn't activate anymore because Spiffy Version X is out") or just go out of buisiness.
I have likewise had CAD/CAM software become unusable after Windows NT 4.0 SP6 because it nuked the hardware key drivers. I have had CD key checking software puke because I have a DVD and a CD-RW. Let's face it... either your software is good enough to survive some piracy or you probably shouldn't be in the market. People who *really* want a corporate package are willing to buy support. Heck, they buy support for OSS for goodness sake. Interesting: the one thing his users want is support, and he isn't willing to see *that*.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Well, I just took a look at Net Weasel. It looks to me as if you've made a few fairly basic mistakes from the marketing perspective, so let me try and come up with some helpful comments as to why you're not getting the response you're looking for.
...if I've missed some compelling must-have functionality your program offers, then your web site needs drastic improvement.
1. Firstly, as far as I can tell your product is an HTML editor with no CSS support. Well, these days that's like trying to sell a graphics editor that doesn't do PNG, or an e-mail program that doesn't handle attachments. Even people who don't want to do their entire site design in CSS still want to be able to do the neat stuff you can only do with CSS.
2. Related to the above, HTML standards have changed a bit in the last 5 years, and you haven't kept up to date by the looks of things. Not valid XHTML, no DTD statement, and so on.
3. You've chosen a field where there is massive amounts of competition, and that's never a good way to make money. Everyone and his dog has made a simple text editor that handles HTML and makes it a bit easier. So, even if you had the best HTML editor in the world, I still wouldn't expect you to be raking in big bucks, because you'd be up against at least half a dozen big companies with big advertising dollars, shelf space in every Best Buy, and major mindshare.
4. Think about who your target market is. You're not going to stand a chance of cracking the pro web designer market with the product you have; pro web designers need CSS, template libraries, DTD validation, image slicing, applet and plugin integration, and so on. At the opposite end, you're not going to get the Joe Sixpack market either, because they'll see raw HTML and recoil in horror. So, you're going after what I'll call the "dabbler" market--people who've learned a bit of HTML for fun and want to build a small personal web site. That's a pretty small niche to be in.
5. You don't have enough differentiation from the free offerings for that niche, in my view. Every half-decent free text editor can edit HTML with syntax coloring, and usually validate it and generate IMG tags too. You clearly know what your differentiators are, which is good: they're the table editor, the form editor and the frameset editor, and maybe the font dialog if it supported CSS, which it doesn't. Trouble is, dabblers generally don't need forms or tabular data--they use tables for layout, which it doesn't look as if your table editor is suitable for. They sometimes use framesets, but most of them know by now that frames suck. So, what can your product do that makes it an essential $20 upgrade from vim or jEdit? Nothing as far as I can see, and...
6.
I don't honestly think that you can hope to make money in the market you're currently aiming at. To do so, you'd have to fix all the defects and shortcomings, and then come up with some "killer app" functionality to beat Mozilla Composer, jEdit and the rest.
So you'd have to get up to date with the standards, and support XHTML and CSS. Then you'd need to add all the other features the free text editors have that people just expect these days, like file browsers, folding, abbreviations/macros, regexp search and replace, autosave, bracket/tag matching, multiple cut/paste buffers, and spelling correction. And then, you'd need to add more compelling features, like a graphical color selector with tools to help users pick complementary colors, and something to search and replace across multiple pages.
That's a hell of a lot of work for a product which, realistically, people would still only pay $20 or $30 for. If I were you, I'd cut your losses and write software that does something nobody else has done yet, or nobody has done cheaply, or nobody else has done well.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
In Texas, that would be a yes.
Yeah, damn right. His program was aimed at taking DivX and MPG movies in commonly downloaded formats, and turning them into DVDs.
So, he wrote a program whose main audience was people who violate copyright, and was then surprised to find people pirating his software? Oh, cry me a river.
I feel the same way about people who write shareware "file sharing" applications, and then act all irate when we share the registration codes for those applications. If you don't want your work to be ripped off, it'd help if you didn't go out of your way to assist people in ripping off the work of others. I've registered fifteen pieces of shareware, but I'm sure as hell not registering "file sharing" software.
Plus, the "meat" of his software was apparently GPLed projects such as ffmpeg anyway...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'm surprised I haven't seen someone comment on this (or I'm too lazy to search the entire thread for this comment) is that the original US PATRIOT act included provisions that made it possible for copyright holders to hack your computers and even possibly due damages if they felt you were infringing on their copyrights. The "Deterrence and Prevention of Cyberterrorism" portion of the act would criminalize any act of hacking that caused damages or losses of over $5000 would be considered an acto fo terroism. The RIAA lobbied for a bypass so they could hack/destroy without any worries of criminal charges.
With this ammendment, they can hack into peoples computers, search for infringing materials, and add them to their "TO SUE" list. Not only that, they were wanting to be able to be proactive, in a sense find people that are supposedly using P2P software and hack their systems so that they are unable to trade copyrighted material, or delete any offending materials.
This ammendment did get knocked down, but then the MPAA tried a similar amendment. i believe this didn't make it either, but both these organizations have kept bringing up new forms of these bills in one way or another.
Sound familiar?
Here's more details...
If everybody had to pay for every software he uses, common people (not just geeks) would become sensible and finally appreciate the value of free software.
If piracy were impossible, I imagine 90% of the software would be free, with the exception of games. Microsoft, in particular, would be relegated to a niche market.
If only "Palladium" were released, things could change --- OTOH we know it won't work: if it did, MS would commit suicide.
"But a man can dream... a man can dream." ----Professor Hubert Farnsworth
Having said that though, what about the case where the program detects a leaked serial number and immediately throws up a dialog. Said dialog tells you in no uncertain terms that the serial number supplied has been pirated, blah blah. Dialog then continues on to tell you that if you may continue the installation. Further the dialog explicitly and in horrifying detail tells you exactly what it will do if you do continue (erase ~, sleep with your wife, beat your kids, etc.) and then simply asks if you want to continue. If you're a nice guy, you make sure that they page down to the bottom of the dialog before allowing continue to be selected.
Voila! Now you have gotten the users permission to punish him for pirating your code. IANAL, but it's probably even legal. Best of all, you can curb one mailicious and one stupid tendency in one pass, piracy, and not reading dialogs...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
What if you entered one by accident, by making a typo? What if a bug in the program caused it to believe that the number was a pirated code when in fact it wasn't?
As far as the "presumption of innocence goes, think of it as getting a traffic ticket by a photo-red camera....:)
What if the camera was malfunctioning? What if another driver triggered it and moved out of the way and you got photographed instead of the offender? What if somebody hacked the camera to issue tickets to random drivers?
As soon as you remove "due process" from the justice system we fall back to something resembling a witch-hunt.
What, excatly speaking, does open source movement have to do with piracy ? Open source is all about making the source code of the program available to the end user; it has nothing whatsoever to do with removing copy protection from closed-source programs.
Furthermore, all the various stupid copy protections do is make cracks sometimes an absolutely neccessary part in getting the program to run. For example, the (legally bought) game Morrowind kept crashing on my machine at startup because of copy protection check; applying the no-cd crack solved the problem completely. Copy protection does not slow pirates in any significant way, it simply annoys legal users.
And deleting the users home directory simply ensures that no one will buy your products out of fear of them deleting their directories because of typos when entering serials or programming errors.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The only solution to piracy is to move to a service-oriented model. Microsoft is moving towards this and I think all companies eventually will. For now, things like online activation will become more popular. These things are costly for a small company but perhaps some company will provide registration services to these companies (a business opportunity for an entrepreneur?).
As internet access proliferates, piracy will just keep increasing. It's possible to host pirated stuff in some foreign "lawless" (in a computer industry sense) country. I can probably list at least 60 countries where this can be done right now.
The increase in piracy is inevitable IMO. If piracy doesn't increase then it likely means that governments are cracking down on civil liberties. Civil liberties are more important than piracy and the only way for the software industry to do well is to move to a service-oriented or subscription-based system. In other words, DRM is very bad and should be rejected on civil liberty grounds; however, online activation is ok IMO...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Did you see the ads? This is how it works.
The alarm is installed in your car, and can detect when someone breaks in and makes a direct connection to start the engine. At this point the car uses a mobile network to relay the fact that it is being hijacked, and sends off its GPS coordinates. This information triggers a loud buzzer in a control room full of trained operators with computer monitors. The operators generally run away from the room screaming, at this point. Anyway, once the signal is sent, the alarm takes over control. First thing it does is it cuts the gas to the engine. Then it starts to flash headlights and taillights. Then it turns the car so it is now riding on two of the side wheels, just before it goes for a tailspin which infalibly lands the car upside down. Alarm locks all doors. Then gas tank gets ignited, often with a flashy explosion, and thief burns, screaming, inside the stolen car.
They claim that one thief will never hit you again.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Not about piracy, but about your program. I think the reason you aren't seeing registrations is because you've made a pretty much unmarketable product. Now I'm not going to go and extinsevly play with it, but it looks to me like a bit of a glorified text editor. Looks like you've added some things like syntax highlighting, a couple wizards for building tables n' such and, well, that's about it.
Ok, well that's nice. That is certianly more HTML related features than notepad, and even a bit more than my beloved UltraEdit. However, you still face the same problem: You have released a text editor. It has a couple nice features, but it's just a text editor in the end.
Well, that's the kind of thing that most people will take for free, but just aren't willing to pay for. I mean there are some nice features over a basic one, but I have a feeling if you made copying impossible, most people would just do without.
You aren't asking a lot, but then again, you don't give a lot. I mean your HTML wizards for tables and frames seem unique but, really, those aren't that useful. Your editor also lacks most of the advanced features that Ultraedit (slightly more expensive than you) or Textpad (slightly cheaper than you) have.
Finally, your stuff is out of date. Tables and frames are NOT the recommend way for doing layout anymore, layers are. If I was going to get an editor that could help me do something in HTML, layers would be my top choice.
So, what you need to do, if making money is your goal, is do something to make your editor more worth buying. Here are some directions you could take:
1) Go the text editor route. Flush it out with support for huge files, hex editing, regular expressions, alternate encoding, macron, etc. Make it a full featured text editor to comete with Ultraedit, but add something more, like your HTML wizards.
2) Go the wizards route, but have them for EVERYTHING. You list like 3 wizards (form, tables, frames). K, nice start, but you need to add a whole lot more. Layers, style sheets, DHTML, JavaScript, etc. Make it so that the wizards can more or less write anything for you.
3) Go the visual route. Try and make something like Fireworks, only probably less featured (And also less espensive). Something for those that want the pointy-clicky but can't afford a Macromedia product.
However where you are now, I'm not supprised that you aren't getting sales. Your product is nice, and maybe something I'd use for free, but I don't see that I'd want to pay for it, espically not instaead of Ultraedit or Textpad.
Not trying to justify the copying, just trying to explain it and give you some ideas.
Also, the whole OSS/GPL push doesn't help. People are becomming trained that little programs that are downloadable ought to be no cost. Software in a box costs money, not software on the web.
Also, don't feel like no one ever buys things like this. The University of Arizona has a site license for Textpad. People do buy text editors, but you need to find an angle that someone doesn't ahve, or do it better than someone is doing it now.
If you want to get paid for your work on software, put up a donation box. Implement planned improvements once sufficient funds accumulate. Make the result available freely. Don't waste any resources fighting the ease of information sharing.
If nobody makes a donation, it means there isn't enough demand for your programming skills. Find something else to work on. If you still end up making the improvements without the funds, it means you already found compensation (the enjoyment of programming, perhaps).
You might also add a way to vote on features when making a donation, or perhaps even make those funds available only for that feature.
It's a waste to spend resources on countering the near zero cost of information duplication. Let it work for you.
I was getting tired of the CIA monitoring all my communications.
Ideology is for ideots.
I would probably tend to be one to side with the "crackers deserve what they get" folks, being that I always pay for my software and don't like the fact that folks take stealing software so lightly. However, about a year ago I had installed some shareware that was somewhat crippled until a valid license key was entered. A friend of mine took the liberty of going to a warez site, finding a key for the software and entered that key. He did not ask me nor did he tell me he had activated the software. I found out when I came back from the bathroom. Had that software deleted my entire home directory, I would have been seriously ticked at my friend and the author of the software. I might have been ticked enough to talk to a lawyer.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
I've run into a tactic like this before many year ago, except instead of a bad serial number being the trigger, it was a missing piece of hardware. I forget the name of the company/software package now (hopefully the head guy is standing in the unemployment line somewhere), but we had a specialized piece of manufacturing software that read CAD files and prepped data for input to our presses. It ran on IBM PS/2 Model 70's (yuck!) that had the system boards modified with a special BIOS chip by the software vendor. Lo and behold one of the system boards died and was replaced without the BIOS chip being transferred to the new board. The next time the software was run it nuked the entire C drive. We had a legitimate right to use the software, but because of a failed piece of hardware we suffered the wrath of some bastard programmer.