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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
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 -----------------------------------
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).
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
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!