Slashdot Mirror
What's the Right Amount of Copy Protection?
WPIDalamar writes "I'm currently working on a piece of commercial software that will be available through a download and will use a license key to activate it. The software is aimed at helping people schedule projects and will be targeted mostly to corporate users. With the recent Windows Vista black screen of death, it got me thinking about what sort of measures I should go through to prevent unauthorized users from using the software. While I don't wish to burden legitimate users, I do want to prevent most piracy. How much copy protection is appropriate? Is it acceptable for the software to phone home? If so, what data is appropriate to report on? The license key? Software version? What about a unique installation ID? Should I disable license keys for small amounts of piracy, like when there's 3 active installations of the software? What about widespread piracy where we detect dozens or hundreds of uses of the same license key? Would a simple message stating the software may be pirated with instructions on how to purchase a valid license be sufficient?"
Also, if your product is a popular one in the home user market, flood google with fake keygen apps which produce keys that initially look like they work (eg for a week or so) but then either:
. chastise the user for trying to break the copy protection
. if your program produces any output to the printer, always only print out an order form for the product
. overwrite the systems windows product activation key so that they have to re-activate it - I'm just waiting for a virus to do this causing a huge overload for Microsoft as people have to manually re-activate their keys for the nth time.
. email you (that way, someone will report you to slashdot and you'll get even more publicity for you product, and then you can claim that it is only the fake keygen that activates this function. flamewars and hilarity will ensue)
(some of the above options are only offered in jest... see if you can guess which ones!)