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?"

Comments

None at all

[Ckwop]

While I don't wish to burden legitimate users, I do want to prevent most piracy. How much copy protection is appropriate?

This may not be what you want to hear but any copy-protection will burden legitimate users. Pirates will remove the copy protection from your software and the unprotected version they create will be more usable than the version you offer.

It doesn't just hurt your customers, it hurts you too. The time you waste trying to create some copy-protection and losing the arms race with the pirates (which you will lose) is time you could have spent making your product better.

The way to beat the pirates is to provide a better service to your customers than they do. The commonly advocated business model is to provide support on the software to paying users - and since your target is business customers this makes a lot of sense.

Businesses, by the way, tend not to pirate on the scale of the private user. Piracy is a big risk to business because businesses have very deep pockets.

In short, the answer is to have no copy protection at all and trust your customers. Trusting the customer is hard but they'll appreciate it.

Simon

Re:None at all

[JohnFluxx]

I disagree.

In the work place, most people might enter a fake installation code for example, but won't go as far as to apply a crack. If the software requires you to apply a crack to use it, then I think most people at work will get their company to buy it. If it just installs anyway with just a small nag screen or something, then most people won't buy it.

Re:None at all

[struppi]

Good points, but I can not completely agree with you. I personally never found it much of a burden to enter a license key. Even a one-time online activation is OK IMHO as long as it's painless. And I can understand why software companies put these measures in, not to stop pirating at all, but to keep the honest people honest.

I know that piracy is not so much of a problem when it comes to businesses, but consider the following: A company purchased 50 user licenses of a product, but the product has no copy protection whatsoever. Probably the people in charge won't even notice if more than 50 employees install the software - at least not in the companies I have worked so far. OTOH, if this software would have told the 51st user "Your company has no more licenses for you to install the software. You can use this program for another 30 days, but please contact your system admistrators to buy a license for you", the company probably will buy another 20 licenses.

So, IMHO, one-time activation is OK if it doesn't get too much in my way, but phoning home at every start or some annoying procedure like the Vista phone activation (I went through that once - took me more than 1.5 hours to activate a copy of Vista) is not OK.

Re:None at all

[xtracto]

f it just installs anyway with just a small nag screen or something, then most people won't buy it.
I agree, you just have to see the hundreds of computers I have seen in several different government offices that use WinZip, they invariably show the startup nag screen telling you how many thousands of files have you compressed and asking you to buy it... of course, you just have to click the continue button and keep using it..

Re:None at all

[arth1]

A good idea would be to add "soft activation". This means customer have to activate your software, and the number of currently active machines counted. Deactivating machines should be running a simple tool that removes the software and decrements the activation count on the server. Activation should never fail (even if the activation server is unreachable), but the customer should be reminded if he is running unlicensed software. This way, you can make sure that users don't mistakenly use to many licenses.

Any system that requires an active deactivation through a tool on the machines where it is installed is badly designed, because the host might not be available for deactivation. If a PC dies, and is replaced with a new one, you can't deactivate the old installation. Similarly if a PC is restored to a point before the installation occured -- then it's impossible to deactivate. (This is part of what bit the Biosphere users -- some people installed the software, ran into problems, and rolled back to pre-install, and tried again.)

Plus, then you have a potential loophole in that people can install on one machine, back it up, deactivate, install it on a second machine, et cetera, and then restore all the backups, and you have a park full of activated copies.

The only sensible approach that I can see for large scale installations is to count concurrent usage through a network server or appliance, and bill according to peak usage. Anything else is going to create a headache for the admins who have to deal with broken machines and reinstalls on a daily basis, and can't reasonably be expected to hang over people's shoulders to count who is using software either.

Re:None at all

[FlyveHest]

So, in short you recommend using a piece of software, that installs another piece of software, that stays on the system after uninstalling the first piece of software (How else could it work, if you have multiple pieces of software that uses it?), and, as you say service, I assume it runs while the original piece of software is not.

Even though you say that you have never had any problems with it, I would absolutely HATE using anything of the kind, and would actively avoid using any piece of software that uses that kind of activation.

Re:None at all

[Chelloveck]

You don't work in a corporate environment and/or I doubt you deal with many systems.

Maybe he doesn't, but I do. And I completely agree with him. Installing a background task just to deal with license keys is bad juju. You recommend Elicense. How many other services are there? This isn't the only program I'm likely to install. How many different license key monitors do you think I want running on my machines? How are they all going to interact with each other?

Re:None at all

[Ender77]

Do you guarantee his business will be here in a couple of years? Do not put anything in where you have to contact somewhere to get a key/permission. If the company goes down and you have to reinstall the software, you are screwed.

Re:None at all

[walt-sjc]

Bing bing. Give that man a dollar.

Working in a larger environment, the ONLY software we allow ANY kind of phone-home / activation shenanigans is from large vendors that have a proven business record - you know they will be around tomorrow / 3 years from now. Not thrilled about it in any case, but we will deal.

Any smaller vendor is required to put source code in escrow for any such eventuality, and none of that activation crap. We need to be able to move software from one machine to another without someone's blessing in order to handle EOL replacement, swapping out failing hardware, etc.

Don't phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a license key, make constant improvements to the product and each new version needs a valid key, disable disclosed keys in new versions.

To use your product a pirate would either have to settle for an old version, or constantly get a new hacked version and new hacked keys. It's enough to eventually get them to be legal.

Remember if you make your product hard to use with lots of negatives like phoning home, them you'll learn the lessons the Record companies are learning. Nobody is bigger than their customers.

Phoning home is _not_ an option

[gunne]

Prompting for a license key upon installation could be ok, since most users are used to that hassle anyway (though it's still a hassle).

"Phoning home" should never be done. Keep in mind that internet connection isn't flawless, sometimes it doesn't work for one reason or another, and would you really want to get a bunch of angry customers mailing/calling you when the software won't work/install because their internet connections went down for a while.
On top of that, if your main user base is business users, most of them will sit in a protected environment which probably won't let your program phone home even if it tries.

This is just an aside from the real problem with programs "phoning home", though. Integrity and privacy should not be taken ligthly.

Re:What's the Right Amount of Copy Protection?

[pilaftank]

If the question is how much should I beat the customer over the head, the answer is none. However, the question is wrong. The really question is how can my licensing mechanism best help legitimate customers track their licenses and stay compliant within the licensing agreement. The customers you want have no desire to steal your software, but they'll get annoyed if you make it laborious to maintain license compliance. Forget about the people who want to pirate your software. You add no value to your product when you waste time on them.

Re:What's the Right Amount of Copy Protection?

[cliffski]

wow, what awesome insight. you sound like you are answering the question "what is the right price for my software?" to which the slashdot crowd will answer "Free!".
You will not get a sensible answer here on slashdot, as this post above me clearly illustrates. there are far too many people in the "stick it to the man!, lets torrent everything!, all software should be free!, information wants to be free! MAFIAAAAA! is dinner ready yet mom?" crowd on here.

Yes, copy protection will annoy a small fraction of legit customers.
Tough.
That's the price of doing business. Do security guards irritate people in shops? does having to get a security tag taken off clothes at the till slow down the sale and irritate the end user? We get sued to a small amount of hassle in return for businesses preventing casual theft in the real world, the software world should be no different. I'd like to see most of the anti-DRM people on here try to extend your theories to the meatspace world. Try leaving the right money on the counter and walking out of a store next time you go shopping, after all, that guy at the till is just an irritating bit of theft prevention in this case isn't he?

As for this lunacy that you should make it free and charge for support, that gives you zero incentive to ship a bug-free product, and makes you a wage slave again rather than a creator of new products.

Unrealistic expectations

[Peeteriz]

"While I don't wish to burden legitimate users, I do want to prevent most piracy."

This will not happen. Cracks for very heavy-handed measures will be available to exactly the same people in exactly the same ways as a cracks for a simple serial-number check on installation, ergo a simple serial-check will get you 99.9% effectiveness of any other software system.

The only things I have seen that seem to work are the hardware usb-dongles; the earlier ones were cracked but the new versions seem to be quite safe. (but they cause a number of other issues and don't qualify as non-intrusive).

Speaking as a very successful vendor: None.

[fyngyrz]

how can my licensing mechanism best help legitimate customers track their licenses and stay compliant within the licensing agreement

A much better question is, how can we maximize the rewards to our paying customers for providing us with the income we need to pursue our chosen path of software development?

The answers are:

• Provide them with a software key that is uniquely theirs so they have the means to protect their investment in us, not so we can attack them.
• Archive that software key so we can give it to them again if they lose it.
• Never, ever disable, restrict, or otherwise cripple a customer's product.
• Provide a means so they can legitimately share our software so as to spread the word.
• Price software reasonably; if the market is large, price low. If small, price higher.
• Be valuable: Provide strong functionality. Remain valuable: Fix it, improve it, be helpful.
• If someone wants a key and can't pay for it or wants to look before they leap, just give them one. Really. Doesn't hurt a thing. People who won't or can't pay aren't going to anyway. Better they use our stuff than our competitor's; better to make them happy than annoy them; better to see to it there's no value to an underground trade, because hacked software presents a security risk to us all.
• Last, but not least, don't burden our customers with "agreements" or "licenses." We wrote stuff, they paid for it. Done deal. Now it's up to us to add value to the product so they'll continue to boost our positions by using our support; spreading the word, the demo, the results.

You know the people who will insist on paying you when you mom their lawn, carry groceries, etc.? Those are the socialized, economically stable majority. They'll pay for good stuff as long as you price it sensibly and shovel value at them like it is going out of style (it actually seems to be in some cases, so use that instead of being part of it.) There is simply no need to go to war with everyone else - be a leg up instead of an obstacle to overcome.

I've done extremely well using this approach, as have my loyal employees. The only thing I would raise a flag about is you actually have to have something worthwhile; if you hand customers (and non-customers) bloated, cpu-hogging bugware, no amount of good will can counter the negative effects of the software itself.

Re:Not strictly true

[cliffski]

*sigh*

So if the customers want the product for free, you work for nothing?

It isn't that simple. Customers want unreasonable things. I want every pizza I ordered to be free, delivered instantly by a dozen naked supermodels. But just because my local pizza company will not provide such a service does not mean a new company will materialize to do so.

throwing out glib comments you read on some web forum does not equate to actual business experience. You cannot pay employees or bills with glib expressions, only profits earned from PAYING customers.

Speaking as an IT Director

[weave]

Some tidbits... my personal opinions, not necessarily those of my employer.

1. When evaluating software, if all things are equal between software products being evaluated, the one with the least or no copy protection always wins out.
2. If a product requires a dongle, either on a client or server, unless my back is up against the wall from users and there's no other product to meet the need, it always gets rejected.
3. A product requiring a license server is tolerable in some cases, but see #1 and #2. There's also the issue of disconnected laptop users to address.
4. A product requiring a unique product key is a royal PITA for multiple automated deployments. This means while we might buy n number of copies and install n number of copies, each copy is going to end up with the same product key via ghost image or scripted install. Would you shut us down even though we have purchase enough copies?
5. Activation during install is OK if it can be automated during an install or first run (and if the latter, doesn't require admin or power user rights). However, be advised that machines are regularly reinstalled and software can move around as users move around. (If they move their office, their desktop probably won't go with them, they'll just get a new install at the new office and their old office will get re-installed for the new person there)
6. I can be held legally liable if I know about copyright abuses where I work. Think I'm going to put myself at personal risk if my employer is too cheap to be legit? Think again.
7. IT shops *want* to do the right thing. Don't fight us, help us. That means give us tools to help us remain compliant that are non-intrusive. Like something I can go to to see what copies are installed where and deal with non-compliance on my own. Yes, a lot of shops have tools like this already but many don't, so also make it optional. Just don't treat us as an enemy. Also remember rule #1

elicense marketing sucks

[Snibriloid]

Really, really bad marketing.

So how do i get the creepy feeling that this guy isn't entirely honest, but actually an elicense marketing stooge?

The install is painless (it installs a license control service that in many years of using I've never had any sort of issue with), and it stops a LOT of piracy.
Err, yes. I have original software too, but somehow the companies failed to send me regular, detailed newsletters about the LOTS of piracy they stopped with their particiular brand of DRM.

It IS possible to "unwrap" the executable, but of all the Elicense protected software I've used, I've only ever seen one game cracked. (Ironically it is the most obscure of the ones I own.)
Yeah, shure, I too make regular searches on the web for cracked versions of the originals i own, especially when the DRM is soooo good that i dont't want a no-cd crack.
And by the way, what are the multiple(!) games that haven't been cracked? I would really like to buy them, if only for rarity value. After all, in the whole history of mankind they are likley to be the only pieces of software ever that weren't cracked....

I am vehemently opposed to DRM, copy protection, call it what you will, but I find Elicense extremely inoffensive due to it's ease of use.
Yeah, i'm opposed to DRM but happy to install extra software on my computer that monitors me. But i am vehemently against everything else DRM-related, trust me.

DRM should not impact legitimate consumers, and this one is the only one I've come across that has never caused me any sort of negative experience.
Software where you have to enter a code ONCE is really a pain in the ass, believe me. But elicense is soooo easy to use, i have to mention it five times. Please buy our product.

DRM-Companies, i beg you, if you let your marketing division run loose on slashdot, at least stop them from taking drugs. Thanks!

Re:elicense marketing sucks

[cool_arrow]

This guy has a good BS detector.