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No. Effective means of protection are when you "roach motel" the data. The first rule of software engineering is you never let the shareware stuff do it all. T
by TheAmazingIdiot 16y ago
No. Effective means of protection are when you "roach motel" the data.
The first rule of software engineering is you never let the shareware stuff do it all. Test version should not save? Rip it out. Shouldn't print? Remove printing. Chop it out wholesale.
If you do an unlocking scheme, then make it subtle. Take a hint from Unix development: dont tell the user that the code worked or not. Just take the code or whatever. Tomorrow, then tell the user if it's a bad code.
And if it's in the blacklist, don't tell the user at all, and instead start introducing subtle errors everywhere. "What, you saved it yesterday and now it doesn't open? Whoops (snicker)." Or, misalign printing so anything looks good for a draft but not 'professional' use. Or you could go the obvious route of slapping a banner on it, but that is usually easily removable.
The idea here is to be subtly annoying up to the point of just doing nasty shit to the data worked with in your program. And of course, give error codes in a form of a md5sum that tells the company if you're a pirate or not.
But as I said earlier, put the time you would protect the program instead as improvement to make your program do its task better and easier. Crackers find these to be challenges. They just crack to keep their chops up.
- rikthevik 16y agoThere was a rumour going around the EE department that if you tried to crack Eagle or use a keygen'ed license, the software would slowly start corrupting the circuits you were working on. After a month it would tell you that you had pirated the software, but not before you'd created a fair number of non-working PCBs. Devious! I'm not sure if this is true or not, but it kept us all on the straight and narrow. :)
- mindslight 16y agoFrom what I remember, the copy protection on Eagle was conceptually simple and seemingly effective. Basically it put the license ID into all saved files. Updates to the software would include an updated blacklist which prevented loading of files from old pirated versions. Crackers wouldn't bother with fixing the load functionality as everything would work fine for the current iteration. There were of course ways to work around it (load then save with the same version under the free license, or export the entire design as text using a ULP and then import in the new version). But on the whole, it struck me as frustrating the process just enough to encourage users who would possibly pay, to pay. (I wonder if Cadsoft made even more from unlocking design files. "You are having trouble opening that design because your fly-by-night consultant used a pirated version of Eagle. We'll happily unlock it for the cost of a deluxe license.")
- jbri 16y agoAnd then all the people who pirated your app deride it as "buggy" and you lose your paying customers, because who would buy such a buggy piece of crap?
- burgerbrain 16y ago"And if it's in the blacklist, don't tell the user at all, and instead start introducing subtle errors everywhere. "What, you saved it yesterday and now it doesn't open? Whoops (snicker)." Or, misalign printing so anything looks good for a draft but not 'professional' use. Or you could go the obvious route of slapping a banner on it, but that is usually easily removable" "Gee, I'm sure glad I decided to pirate [program], it's buggy as hell. Better warn my friends..."
- coderdude 16y agoSpyro: Year of the Dragon used a similar technique to great avail. Don't be so quick to dismiss this method of deterring crackers. It just needs to be done right. There are arguments going both ways on this issue so it's simply not black and white. Perhaps it works better for games than applications, but again, you'll find arguments going both ways for games and apps alike.