Re: RSA frustrations - encrypt with private, decrypt with public - possible?

From: Alun Jones (alun_at_texis.invalid)
Date: 10/25/05 

Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 09:52:09 -0700

"William Stacey [MVP]" <william.stacey@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%239YJJvW2FHA.2216@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> That is if you know. You could only know this if the client connected to
> a server each time (or some factor) and said what lic it was using. This
> has issues of its own. In the end, I spend your time on the app and in
> marketing.

I definitely agree with this - as a shareware vendor for, oh, over a decade,
I'll note that you really only benefit significantly from addressing the
people who "just don't have time to register" - if they find that it takes
longer to crack your software than to register it, they will register it.
In fact, if they find that it takes just a little effort to crack your
software, they will register it. If it takes no effort at all to crack your
software, they will crack it and claim that they "were going to get around
to registering it later, but just plumb forgot".

Protecting it any more than this is useless. Either you'll provide enough
of a challenge that someone's intrigued enough to do the work and publish it
(turning your hard encryption into "easy - download the tool"), or you'll
provide so much of a challenge that people will use something that's easier
to get into legitimately.

There was an old saying about shareware - the way to make more money is
either to increase the price, or to decrease the price. The magic comes in
trying to guess which one will make more money.

You could make a new saying about shareware - the way to encourage
registrations is either to make it easier to use the software legitimately,
or to make it harder to use the software illegitimately. The magic comes in
trying to guess which one will work better (and noting that the two are
actually connected).

Alun.
~~~~
[Please don't email posters, if a Usenet response is appropriate.] 

-- 
Texas Imperial Software   | Find us at http://www.wftpd.com or email
23921 57th Ave SE         | alun@wftpd.com.
Washington WA 98072-8661  | WFTPD, WFTPD Pro are Windows FTP servers.
Fax/Voice +1(425)807-1787 | Try our NEW client software, WFTPD Explorer.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: RSA frustrations - encrypt with private, decrypt with public - possible?
    ... > a server each time and said what lic it was using. ... longer to crack your software than to register it, ... Washington WA 98072-8661 | WFTPD, WFTPD Pro are Windows FTP servers. ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.security)
  • Re: computer browser service wont start
    ... I've noticed that dnsApi is sometimes one of the things that starts early before everything it needs is actually working, e.g. the TCP/IP and network stack. ... In the situations I've seen the Event Log entry from dnsApi that you report, the computer did successfully register itself later. ... This assumes that the targetted DNS server can accept Dynamic registrations and the computer doing the dynamic registration is permitted to do so. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)
  • ASP: Get user login ID
    ... But when we register the dll on our web ... server, and call it from our ASP code, it generates an error. ... Dim lngCharsReturned As Long ...
    (microsoft.public.inetserver.iis.security)
  • Re: A record dynamic DNS registration failing depending on DHCP
    ... for clients. ... so I can assume that your server is using the default root hints. ... are only being registered in the Reverse Lookup Zone. ... recieved their IP from another DHCP server register their name under the ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.dns)
  • Re: Boot Prbs in Win2K
    ... The server did not register with DCOM ... No attempts to start the service have been made since the last boot. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.setup)