Re: Want to Protect my Software - Recommendations?

holtz.regina@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Aug 12, 6:46 am, Ertugrul Söylemez <e...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

I recommend a simple license key check. You can use public key
cryptography to make it impossible for crackers to generate valid
license keys. This is the offline equivalent of what you want.

This is a great idea. It makes the entire thing so much simpler. Can
you recommend an article or tutorial how to use public key
cryptography for this kind of simple license key check?

No, I'm sorry. But it essentially involves generating some license data
(either a random string or some customer-related information), and
signing that. The program verifies the signature as a step of the
license validation.


OTOH, since my software can be purchase only from my web site, what's
the point of emailing a product key with the software? It can be
copied even more easily than the software. Any insights on this?

The license will then be electronical. There is no reason not to send
it by email. If the license contains personal information, the customer
won't want to send it around to his friends.

By the way, that should suffice. Credit card numbers would be more
secure for you, but would potentially endanger the customer's security.


You should also take into account that such vendor-side protection
is considered annoying, no matter how well you implement it. It
doesn't stop pirates, but it may easily scare away your legitimate
customers. You _will_ run into problems with all active DRM methods
you implement, especially if you try to validate by hardware
configuration.

If 60% of your customers pay, but 95% of your _potential_ customers
moved to products with less annoying DRM, then your idea was a total
failure.

What you say sounds very logical and I myself identify with this.
However, it seems that consumers (and business in general) don't
behave this way. If vendor-side protection annoyance were a factor, no
one would have bought Windows XP or Vista...

I would love to not bother at all with implementing product key or
activation for my software, but unfortunately it seems that this is
not how the world works.

Consider that Windows is the most widely used operating system in the
world. Microsoft knows that (currently) crackers will break their DRM
methods. People in need of Windows and not willing to pay for it, will
not get an alternative, but instead find an appropriate crack. This is
not true for your software. And if you look closely, you'll find that a
considerable number of people actually do turn away from Microsoft
products.

One more important thing is that Microsoft decided not to use
sophisticated DRM for a long time. One of the main reasons is that this
makes Microsoft software spread. People used to handle it like
freeware, like the obligatory essence of every PC. Now Microsoft
doesn't need that feature anymore, so they implement active DRM.

Take Microsoft's example and try to view it from the other side, as they
did. Write software of high quality or high innovation and don't care,
if it's pirated. If 100 people get a pirated copy of your software, 5
or 6 may be willing to pay for it. Don't scare those 5 or 6 potential
customers away.

In other words: Don't view pirates as criminals. Instead view them as
users of your software and as potential customers. This is how the
world works.


Greets,
Ertugrul.


--
nightmare = unsafePerformIO (getWrongWife >>= sex)

.

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