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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?"
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
Just like any kind of DRM. Dedicated individuals will find ways around it and likely have some fun in the process. Cracking copy protection is practically a game to a lot of people who will never even use the software. The only people who will be inconvenienced are the people willing to pay for the software.
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.
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.
A license key is enough to discourage the casual pirate (custom encryption and multiple variables helps, such as name + password instead of just password) while, from my experience, not being enough to discourage regular users. Entering a key once and not worrying about it ever again is normal enough, and not bothersome. Going beyond that is asking for some glitch to cause legit customers to be calling you up to ask what the hell just caused their copy of your software to invalidate, or why they can't install it on their new computer, etc. Most importantly, it will also encourage people to crack your protection, thus making the pirate version more appealing to the end user.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
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.
dna.js
You don't need to go this far: I spent the last 3 weeks on the road with my laptop: Matlab ceased to function as soon as the license key manager got out of touch of the license server. I hate that macromedia shit.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Is it acceptable for the software to phone home?
As a member of a small corporate IT department, I can tell you that (except for Microsoft itself), software phoning home for anything other than updates means instant banning of your product.
If so, what data is appropriate to report on? The license key?
If you insist on going down that path, what information would really help you reduce piracy? Keep in mind that, merely during the initial evaluation of your software, the same license may get used a dozen times without any intended piracy... "Yup, works on XP. Yup, works on 2k... Oops, blows a gasket on 98... Doesn't seem to like server versions...".
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?
That gets tricky... IANAL, but only the big boys like Microsoft can get away with that BS. If you try it, you should probably prepare to get sued.
Now, you do have one chance to block it - At installation. Even I'll allow (grudgingly) most products a one-time online activation. If at that time you deny activation and give an EASY way to contact you to resolve the problem (you can expect them to lie, and should probably just give them a new code, but it might serve as a reminder to the users that they shouldn't make too many more copies), okay, fair game. After-the-fact, though? YOu'll just piss legitimate users off.
I've been waiting for code-wheels to make a comeback.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Have each copy personally delivered(*) to the client and you will find that they never pass on copies and will faithfully purchase every upgrade you make available.
(*) Personal Delivery service to be carried out by Marco and Guido who have their own, very smart uniforms (Gucci suits, dark glasses) and will also provide their own baseball bats. A personal message from you to the client will also be delivered with every copy of the software with a reassuringly soft, menacing undertone. Contact Marco and Guido DRM(**) Services on 555-NO-REFUSAL.
(**) DRM = Delivery with Real Menace
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
As you would have them do unto you.
:).
FWIW, I think license keys are fine. But phoning home is not a good idea.
If you can link a license key to a mailing address or email address then that's good (could be yahoo mail doesn't matter - it's a matter of getting some stats).
If you're planning to have future versions of your software then you might as well decide on how upgrades and patching is to be done - key upgrades, discounts etc
Who was it that said to always make sure to leave a spot in the fence where children could sneak through? P.T. Barnum, perhaps? The point is, people used to understand and accept that a certain amount of "losses" will occur, and that sometimes these "losses" are in fact good for profits, by driving more paying customers to the business. It's only recently that we've evolved the technology and capabilities to ensure that EVERY person gets charged for EXACTLY what they consume. As if we could even know that for sure...
Don't apply macro-laws (movement of fluids) to micro situations (individual molecules in a fluid). Focus on the macro violations-- widespread corporate use without a license-- but let the little people slip through the cracks. Those of us who install and forget, and never really get much use out of the program anyway, are very unlikely to buy the program in the first place.
Explaining to people how to pirate but appealing to their goodwill might go a little far, though. I would report only the serial numbers used in the registration, along with the IP address that contacts your server (not the IP address of the machine itself). The rest of the information is None Of Your Business (TM). Try to find a happy medium between accepting a couple copied serial numbers in the wild, and noticing that a large number of computers coming from similar IP addresses are using the same serial number.
Definitely do NOT disable the program if it cannot phone home. I *hated* that about Bioshock, when my crappy firewalled network made it almost impossible for me to activate the software. Since you're aiming at corporate networks, you're certain to have lots of people with this problem.
Good luck with it.
PS: What are the current laws on downloading a program and using a serial number to unlock it? We all know that EULAs have yet to be proven in court, with many cases existing that both support and reject EULAs. So is there a clear case where it's illegal to use a serial number to unlock freely given content?
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Be open about the phoning home. Noone likes a closed source software that phones home for no reason. Don't hassle customers, even the ones who install a copy that is known to be pirated. You can't really tell who's the legitimate customer and who is not.
If you discover that there is widespread piracy of your product, and you want to do something about it, then make the leap to hardware protection. Bear in mind that dongles are quite a hassle for the customer. But at least the hassle is effective. Other means of protection means a hassle for paying customers, and just a fun challenge for pirates.
Spot on - I know plenty of people who use PCs (usually laptops) in their music and/or art studios who never connect those machines to the internet... EVER! The muso types will often strip back everything on a PC leaving a bare OS + drivers + sampler/sequencer + ASIO drivers. It's all they need and they believe they get better performance and more security without it.
I also know, and have worked for, companies where information is so secret (mission critical biz stuff or military) that you have to use a provided laptop in a room with no windows that's shielded from radio wavs... paranoid, yes, but "phone home" software is simply not an option in that case. Also. no phones were allowed in that room so manual "phone home" wouldn't have been possible.
Also, some of us are so paranoid that we don't let anything in/out of our firewalls except our browser application. Mind you, I can still use the interweb and I've never been trojan/virused... except this damn cold I seem to have but I can't blame the internet for everything!
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
The only copy protection you need is something to detect you're inserting a disc/disk into the system, then have a black guy which raps with artificial intelligence to interact with the user.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
The fact is most companies will not make tons of money on support. If people are not willing to pay for the software up front, they are not willing to pay for support. I will take my former employer as an example. They purchased one copy of RHEL and had a support contract in place for that one copy. They installed it on over 200 machines.
My current company charges $100 per agent and $20 per agent/year for support. We often get requests from people asking if we have a free or open source version. We have had people make comments that they would gladly pay for support if we had a free version. Based on experience, that is a lie and these people want something for nothing. We have business expenses to cover and cannot rely on support fees that may not show up.
"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).
Consider your potential customer:
You're writing project management software, so we're probably talking 150-200+ employees. Companies of this size are going to have some sort of security policy in this day and age, and potentially (depending on your market segments) may be on closed (meaning no or extremely limited external internet access) networks.
There's a good chance at the low end of your customer base that they will have some variety of managed software push in place where IT pushes down software and licenses to the workstation users, and it's almost a certainty at the high end of project management using companies (my primary contract fits into this category, and uses centrally managed software).
I'd therefore recommend a model that allows for central licensing, preferably with no need for IT management to install a license server (lower barrier to entry for your application) and does not need to phone home. I'd suggest a license key mechanism with an optional ability for volume licensees to share a single license database via a network connection.
Will it be hacked? Yep, naturally (but you sound like you're clued enough to have worked that out without my help) but you're trying to keep honest people honest here. Let's face it, do you really care if you have one or two users install it for free at home to hone their skills if you just sold 500 licenses to the multinational who employs them?
Large organizations have busy IT depts who appreciate it when software developers make their lives easier. Having an IT dept pushing your software over your competitors can only be perceived as a good thing, so take advantage of it! IT can put up very effective roadblocks if they perceive you as making their life more difficult and impeding things such as system imaging. The last thing you want to be is branded "incompatible with our environment" by your customer's IT dept.
Cheers,
Minupla
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
None.
Wrong, everyone has the right to protect something that they've worked hard on. What if the product you made was your only source of income and no-one bought it but everyone had a copy of it? You'd do whatever you could to protect your livelihood.
Get out of your fucking tree, cut your hair and get a job.
Summation 2
License management software. Very common.
Deleted
As a veteran of the first copy protection wars, let me give you one simple insight that should guide you:
"Thieves don't buy"
Software thieves will not pay for your software, no matter how much you lock it up. If they can't get a cracked copy or code, 99.44% of them won't use it. It doesn't matter if they still live with their parents, or are the CEO of a big company; thieves don't buy.
Thus, you must tailor your strategy towards supporting your non-thief customers, while minimizing the parasitic cost of the thieves.
Consider doing this:
* Require registration for support, not for running the program. If they run an unregistered copy (ie: no serial number), give them full functionality but remind them how to pay on startup, gently. Perhaps do it only when you do the weekly update check, or whatever. Support is your major marginal cost, so you want to try and avoid giving support to the thieves.
* Phone home to check for updates, but continue to run no matter what. If the phone-home does detect a registration conflict, alert the user ("someone may have stolen your registration number") but continue to run.
* Explicitly disclose what your phone home does, and allow the user to disable it, or the registration check, if they so desire.
* Provide a way for your legit users to get logs of the phone-home information. Say their laptop gets stolen; the IP address logged on the phone-home could mean it gets recovered, you're a hero, and have a customer for life. But have strong data privacy rules about the information and how long it gets retained.
* If you have a product with low/no marginal costs, consider letting your users decide how much to pay you (works best with small ticket items). See http://tipping.selfpromotion.com/ for an essay I wrote on this some years back.
* Always remember to add the clause to your software license that makes Bill Gates promise to become your towel-boy.
The easier you make it for your honest users to pay you, and the more helpful you are to them, the more you will be paid.
"World Domination - a fun, family activity"
1. Install keys are a pain, but we're all used to them now and we accept them. Very few users send the software back or refuse to upgrade just because of install keys.
2. Phone home activation is a bigger pain. It gives you some control but can cause headaches for the customers IT dept. It can also make cracked versions more appealing, and makes non-internet connected computers impossible to activate. In general though, it is acceptable if its a once only affair. However, regular phone-home checks are more than enough to sway the purchasing decision against your product.
3. Locally installed license servers can be a pain, but they offer both you and the end user complete control over whats going on. They do represent an initial setup hurdle, but after that they offer considerable flexibility in that the end user can install your software on all the computers on their system and then there is a limit applied on how many clients can run at any one time. Your customer can then buy a small number of licenses and upgrade to more if necessary. Obviously this still needs the customer to have a decent internal network, but not necessarily internet connected, which is an issue in some places.
4. Hardware dongles are just a menace and a guaranteed way to drive your customers away.
At the end of the day i think you need to evaluate how important your software is to your customer. If its critical, and they have no alternative, then you have the option of going the Microsoft route and pissing them off as much as you like cos they need you more than you need them. This may come back to bite you in the arse.
If your software has little or no value to the home user (i.e. they have no use for or it or wouldn't pay for it anyway) then you can probably get away with just a license key activation cos business customers tend to be a little more honest by nature. This also makes your product appealing to small companies cos they can buy one license (so they feel honest) and use it on 3 or 4 computers. This *is* technically "stealing", but you've still sold one more copy than you might have done.
If you really want to have total control, and you think your customers will accept it, then the license server is a good choice. Your sales people should be able to dress it up as a convenient way for the IT staff to manage their licenses and if some sort of phone home is needed then only one hole needs to be drilled through the firewall. In future revisions you could also expand its role into an update server or something.
It is possible to do some mix and match. For instance, Intel distribute the free versions of their C++ and Fortran compilers with both a phone home activation code AND a license key file. I find this to be quite convenient (though admittedly it doesn't stop the software being replicated across several machines). You could for instance sell single or double licenses to small companies (in the expectation that they will use it on more than one or two computers) and sell license servers to larger companies (who might be more strict about license accounting). This sort of flexibility (not adopting a one size fits all approach) would reduce the chances alienating whole segments of potential customers.
So in summary, you are selling a product and that product has to be acceptable to your potential customers. If its not, they won't buy. Consider your target market and implement your controls accordingly. And if you can afford it, don't be afraid to offer flexibility in the licensing systems.
A while back I wrote an app that was key activated. The key had two components. The first was the name of the person that it was sold to (from the credit card) and the other was a hash of that name, the version number, etc. The user needed to enter both in order for it to work. (And the two needed to match, of course.) My thinking was that using the name in plain text would make it personal and encourage the user to not give it away while still allowing them to do what they thought was reasonable (running on both a laptop and desktop, for example). Basically, a gentle reminder to help honest people stay honest. The dishonest people are just going to hack your binaries anyway.
Devon
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:
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So, by way of example, I wrote an un-copy-protected software package and released it as "guiltware" - I asked them to click on the paypal link and make a donation to MDA through me. 5 years on, I know people are still using it because I get help requests.
But not one person ever, ever, ever clicked the link.
Clear, Dark Skies
*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.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I am not as knowledgeable as most replies here but I can tell you which software I bought and which I didn't. Maybe it'll give some insights.
===
1. Fraps. Bought.
Copy protection: reg key
Tried the trial version many years ago, cool to record your games, not much games needed recording, and youtube wasn't out. Forgot about it. Later when youtube hits the web, there're some stuff I wanna post up. Insta thought of fraps. Googled it, wow this guy's still at it! I can easily crack it, but bought it instead because it's "worth" it and the dude is still working hard on it. Lifetime upgrade, smooth running program. Would I've bought it if it was $3449 usd? Probably not. Even if fraps didn't require a reg key, I would donate to it. Why? It does what it says it does, and it does it in a quick, smooth, no BS way.
2. Steam. Bought.
Copy protection: online registration (MMO account style), clean, works instantly after format, no backups necessary
When I felt like playing CS again, it installs steam by default. Thought nothing of it. Later when HL2 came out, pirated, played first map, blew me away. I emailed dev and asked if they will earn more money if I buy it off steam or the box. The answer is "same". But I skip the publisher anyway and bought off steam while I already had a copy in my hdd. The game was so good I didn't mind the $50 to show props. Again, smooth running, works as advertised. Doesn't cost $4k.
3. Famous photo editing software. Pirated.
Copy protection: activation key
Can't afford, but need to use. New version every year (not sure, maybe 2 years). With newer version files non-importable back to older version without losing some data. Cannot afford every new version upgrade price. Would I pay for it if it were the same price of a PC game? Definately. Would I pay for it if it were the same price range as some less reputable photo software? Yes. Would I pay for Winning Eleven 8, 9, 10, 10 Evolution every year just cuz the jerseys changed? No.
4. Famous OS. Pirated.
Copy protection: activation key
Can afford, however doesn't always do as advertised. Requires tremendous attention and work to make it work smoothly. Makes me nervous when people need to use my computer as little voice says they will screw it up and it'll cost you another 3 hours of my finite life. Not sure if I will get MORE support by paying for it. Worst, not sure if MORE support will make this experience "better".
===
I guess what I am trying to show is, and my general direction towards CP is that the the best CP is no CP. Instead, make something that is truly fun, good, happy, addictive, smooth, sexy, that people want to pay for it. Your software might not be at the Ferrari level, but at least make it so that people feel like pirating a Mercedes is teh ghey. Pirating a Hyundai is less so, you agree? It doesn't have to be cheap, look at Smart car. Nice, cute. But if you see a pirated Volkswagen beetle, you'd immediately think it's ghey. Pirating ipod? Ew. Pirating a famous memory makers' mp3 player? Sure.
I generally agree with the fraps direction. Pay once, use it for life. Lifetime upgrade, lifetime URL to download the upgraded version, quick, fast, and malware free. Pirate it? you gotto search for the seeds every single time, read comments, and virus scan it every time buddy.
The answer is, as for any good questions: depends.
A few rules what not to do:
A) "Phoning home required" and "online registration required" means "won't use this".
B) Crippling unregistered versions is a bad idea for business software - they need to spend more on IT support.
C) Time-limiting your software is a no-go - the limit will be exceeded in the middle of an important meeting/negotiation, and your software will be eradicated in two days.
D) No matter what you add, pirates can remove it, but legitimate users will suffer.
E) Never take your client's data as ransom - you will lose your customers if you do (in this particular case, a read-only access for unregistered clients could be acceptable).
A few rules what to do:
A) Printing nice license certificates will get you more money from typical business users.
B) "Phoning home for updates if accepted by user" and "online updates are available only for registered instances, offline updates are available only for registered cusmtomers" is OK - they feel they get support.
C) Giving volume licenses will save some headache for Business and for you (if they need 7 license, they will likely to buy a 10-pack for a price of 8 licenses).
D) Offer site licenses based on the size of the company, if they ask you about the price/discount - that way, your software has a chance to become "the internal standard".
D) Unique ID is a good idea, as long as it is visible to the user and the software is working even if not capable to phone home (a red "unregistered" label is a good reminder for legitimate users).
E) If you add time-locked registration codes, you should make it possible to load multiple codes and continue if at least one of them is valid.
F) Consider building customised instances for them - like embedding a background image of "Licensed to company X, for 10 seats".
G) Offer them absolutely copy-protection free versions for double-price.
H) An automated version check in the background (no serial, just checks an txt file via http) will give you some info if you have access to the web server logs and will be considered as a feature.
Thanks for all the comments everyone. I've been reading through them and have some ideas. Here's a scheme I had been considered that might address some of the concerns brought up.
1) Upon purchase, user gets a license key.
2) When installing, the software generates a random (somewhat) unique installation id
3) The license key is checked locally, with no net connection required.
3) Upon app startup, if there's an internet connection, the software phones home with the software version, the license key, and the installation ID
The phone-home also gives a version-check to let the user know about any updates.
4) We log the license key and installation ID
Someday, we do some data analysis and find any license keys with a large number (maybe 5, maybe dozens, not sure) of installation ID's. The data analysis should look for interwoven log records of installation ID, because the user might have uninstalled it on one machine, and installed it on another. Then a person (not automated process) would get a report and be able to investigate and flag certain keys as compromised.
What happens next?
Do we cause the software to stop functioning? (I don't like that)
Do we cause the web service-portion to stop functioning? (I don't like that either)
Do we pop up a window saying, "SOFTWARE PIRACY DETECTED!! YOU ARE GOING TO JAIL IF YOU DON'T STOP!"
Do we pop up a window saying, "Hey, this might be pirated. Go to http://xxxxx/ to purchase additional copies"
Maybe the software does nothing, and we deal with it through customer support. A friendly email to the original purchase agent?
I guess the goal is make honest people stay honest. As many have pointed out, it will be impossible to prevent someone who REALLY wants to pirate the software.
I would also like a pizza delivered by a dozen naked supermodels (if only to make my neighbor green with envy), but I'd expect to pay quite a lot for that service.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The best method I've really seen is at the company I used to work for, Maxon Computer, they make cinema 4d. The only stuff you can really protect against is casual opportunistic pirating. Ie a company that buys a copy and puts it on several machines at once instead of buying several licences; which by the way is extremely common amongst smaller 10 man studios. C4D uses a serial number, this is very little burden for you or the customer. The serial is not tied to the hardware in any way; its freely moveable and installable on any machines you like. The check is simple, it checks the network to see if someone else with the same serial is already running the software, if so then it just doesn't load, that's it. Yes, you can in theory start yanking out network cables before you load it and so forth but this isnt really an option for most, crawling under the desk, losing shared network drives of media etc several times a day. Just make a personally identifiable serial number to scare some away from giving it out and add a network check to stop people casually spreading it around the office. If someone wants to copy your software for free, they will do it, no protection will save you, just accept this and don't burden your paying customers with annoying crap. - Dongles cost money, you'll have driver/os issues, they'll break, they'll get fried and corrupted, they take up slots, they get stolen, they are truly crap IMHO. - Tying your serials to NICs is a hassle and you will be forever sending new serials every time someone upgrades their computer, you don't want to set yourself up for this eternal headache - Online checks, lets not even go there.
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!
+1 Spinal Tap reference.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If your target is buisness users, this sort of "phone-home product activation" scheme is going to cause you and your customers a lot of grief. The install might be "painless" on someone's home computer (assuming the someone isn't ethically opposed to product activation), but it won't be in a corporate environment, where your product may have to traverse a proxy server (or even an authenticating proxy server) to reach the internet.
One of my first assignments was to configure a database for a product demonstration. I had to do it outside of my home country and the software/customer could not provide a connection to the internet to the server.
One of the pieces of software required a connection to do its activation. No phone or snail mail supported. It was so backwards where we had a tech from the software company online and they didn't know how to activate the software w/o an internet connection. We had to wait for them to send us a patch disk that included the activation files.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Where do you work? A Deli? 1996?
You run cracked software on a workplace PC here in 21st Century Corporate America, you'll be lucky to get away with a strictly worded warning. Get caught again and your employment will be terminated for sure.
On the other hand, install some nice new DRM-free software in the corporate workplace and wave it around enough and it will get copied and brought home by hundreds of non-paying users.
The answer to the man's question lay in just exactly how good and unique his software is. If he's created the new spreadsheet-like paradigm for which their is no competition, he can attach a big ball and chain to the floppy and Corporate America will still make him rich (God Bless the USA!). If it's "Yet Another [fill in the blank]" for which there are better marketed (e.g., MS) or free open-source versions of, then he'll need a friendlier DRM scheme, or folks will just go with what they know/what costs less.
Yea those darn security guards. Wouldn't be so bad if they just stayed in the shops, but they insist on moving in with us and making sure we use the product appropriately and let no one else use it who didn't pay for it. My kids really hate them. They like to "crack" jokes at the guards and have silly nicknames for them like "dongle." I know, my kids are weird. Those security tags are a pain too, I wish they'd just take them off at the store and not leave them on my clothing to get snagged on every thing I walk by. They itch too. Price of doing business I guess. But hey there are real thieves out there!
Lots of good comments here already, but what the heck - always room for a few more. I was a shareware vendor for many years, and now I run a small software company offering commercial products. I've dealt with this issue for a long time, so I can offer a few observations. The first thing I would say is "do what your customers expect". In some markets, people expect to have to enter a serial number, but nothing more. In other markets, people expect to use a hardware dongle with the software. If you find out what others are doing and do the same, you won't violate your customers' expectations. They will perceive you as a responsible, professional vendor, while accepting a modest amount of inconvenience. Most new software vendors tend to err on the side of too much copy protection, because they over-estimate the value of their work and they get really pissed-off at the thought of people stealing it. You should be so lucky! Cut whatever you had in mind in half, and do what must to deal with piracy later if you are fortunate enough to have your software widely copied and used. Most business and professional software users are pretty responsible about paying for the software they use. A very modest speed bump that lets them notice if they are using a non-legitimate copy is generally sufficient. In every successful company I have ever worked at, there's a clear policy that all commercial software in use must be properly licensed and paid for. Not that there isn't some unofficial copying going on, but it has to stay below the level that comes to anyone's official attention. My company is very careful to protect the value of its commercial products, but never in a way that gets beyond customer expectations. In various markets we use registration codes, timeouts, permanent personal registration of software copies, and even hardware dongles. All have their value, but it's never worth losing customers over this issue. Any legitimate customer complaints, and we would back right off and offer an acceptable alternative. That's business. Personal software is another matter. As a shareware author I always made sure that my trial versions remained useful even if never registered, and I always encouraged users to ask their support questions even if they weren't registered. Based on the support questions and the number of downloads versus paid registrations, I would estimate about a 10:1 ratio between users and paying customers. Did that make me unhappy? Not at all! Most of those unpaid users would never pay for the software anyway, but by using it they are spreading the word and helping me test and improve the product. Plus I don't mind doing a little bit to improve the world for free as long as I'm getting an adequate return on my personal time investment.
They are all that. People aren't using them in the first place because of the 'MindShare' aspect that you mentioned.
Spending money on a free version? Perish the thought.The GP was right. I've now worked at two large corporations and one small one that all had site licenses to WinZip. They install them on all desktop systems automatically. Most large corporations have policies in place such that pre-installed software must be licensed. This is for audit reasons and so they can claim support if they need to.
I, of course, promptly uninstall it from my machines and replace it with 7-Zip. Last time I checked, Winzip still didn't handle several major file-types (like RAR).
work on employee PCs it definitely won't work on servers that need to be able to reboot by themselves (and if the nag screen does not halt booting of the program than you have not accomplished anything as in many cases no-one will see it). In the same way you *MAY* get away with phone home software on a PC, but it definitely would not work on a server - especially one that may not have any direct internet access.
I would agree with previous posters that a one time installation code would be acceptable, and even perhaps one that expires over time (though that would certainly be annoying) as long as the process to upgrade is easily scriptable.
For employee PCs you might be able to get away with a call-in-on-boot type scheme as long as it uses standard protocols like http or ftp. But I would certainly understand people balking at this sort of thing.
It depends on where your software is intended to be installed.
It's called a lie. (Laser Induced Error) If a specified track/sector on the disk returns an expected error, then do the next valid step; otherwise operate as if it's a pirated copy and quit working properly.
Many software titles from the late 80's and early 90's used this method of copy protection. With CD installations and later downloaded installations, this method was no longer feasable.