Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: What Is a Reasonable Way To Deter Piracy?

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-to-their-house-and-verify-them-personally dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I'm an indie developer about to release a small ($5 — $10 range) utility for graphic designers. I'd like to employ at least a basic deterrent to pirates, but with the recent SimCity disaster, I'm wondering: what is a reasonable way to deter piracy without ruining things for legitimate users? A simple serial number? Online activation? Encrypted binaries? Please share your thoughts."

6 of 687 comments (clear)

  1. Re:life-long updates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Paranoid much???

    So...you'll just give up your credit card info to anyone that says they're offering a good product?

    Boy, do I have a deal for you!

  2. Re:Read This by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    Read this. Memorize it.

    I did, but now I've forgotten C++. Thanks a bunch!

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  3. Re:life-long updates by Immerman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not giving your credit card info to some random person or "company" is paranoid now? Well shit, tell you what, I've got a lovely iPad I'll sell you for a nickle, just give me your credit card info...

    --
    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  4. Re:life-long updates by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    On a similar note, I once saw a utility that, if unregistered, would let you use everything in it, the only catch being that all of the fonts in the tool switched to Comic Sans.

  5. Re:life-long updates by ericloewe · · Score: 4, Funny

    Could be worse. Could be Wingdings.

  6. Re:life-long updates by hh10k · · Score: 3, Funny

    Most amusing (and effective) DRM I ever saw was actually a fairly loose and easily broken copy protection scheme

    I did this with my game. The code that checked the cd-key was easily bypassed, but that code also fixed a critical bug that happened on level 10. It was funny that we had people coming to our support forum asking for help, and we could easily call them out as pirates!

    We actually manage to convince one of them to buy the game properly.