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What legal implications does this have? You shouldn't be liable for someone illegally using your software. If you store their information they may have some c

• lmkg 17y ago
  (IANAL) In California, it's illegal to place (injuring) booby-traps, because it's effectively punishing somebody for a crime without a trial and that violates due process of law. However, refusing someone use of a stolen good isn't the same as punishing them for stealing it. I doubt this has come to trial yet, but a reasonable line to draw would be that bad side effects can castrate the stolen software as much as you want, but cannot extend any further than the intended use of the software itself. Having stolen software not work is totally fine; damaging the host computer in some way or leaking private information is probably a good way to get yourself sued.
  • rdtsc 17y ago
    > I damaging the host computer in some way or leaking private information is probably a good way to get yourself sued. The intent is to not damage anything, but rather to only crash the program itself. This might lead the user to visit a support forum where they will be kindly adivised to purchase a legitimate copy of the software. However, if I understand correctly, the program is crashed when it overwrites its own memory. That means that at some point it could end up executing random code. Although very unlikely, it is possible that it could execute the equivalent of "remove users home directory" code. A more likely, but less 'punishing' outcome could be the execution of a tight infinite loop. That could be interpreted as a 'denial of service' and thus full under the booby-trap law.