> Not really if the hardware costs $5 and the software $1000, wouldn't you agree? Also, the same hardware-design can be used for different software products. I

> Not really if the hardware costs $5 and the software $1000, wouldn't you agree? Also, the same hardware-design can be used for different software products. I don't really agree. Like in my example of the iLok. The iLok was usually free with any compatible plugin purchase and was certainly cheap to produce. Customers still viewed it as a hardware product. Working at a different studio that day and you forgot your iLok? Tell your customer you can't work with them until you drive back home. Lost your iLok somewhere? You can't work until they next-day ship you a new key. It is not a software product. > Well, you could tamper-proof it. I'd say tamper-resistant, you can never really make it tamper-proof. Some youtubers will really surprise you with what they can break into. It also raises production costs more, as you're not buying an off-the-shelf device, and creates more potential customer issues. Is there any chance that if I drop the device, it triggers your tamper-resistant scheme? Etc etc. It's always a game of cat and mouse with these things. The only way to make something completely un-copyable is to never release it. (even server-only applications can get bootlegged with enough dedication. Look at private MMO servers). Otherwise you're just making it more difficult to do, and have to decide if the tradeoff of deterring piracy is worth the additional costs to research/develop/produce and the potential anger it can cause actual paying customers. Every industry probably has it's own sweet-spot, I don't think it's something that has a one-size-fits-all answer. As much as I would love to say just abandon DRM/copy-protection altogether, there are probably situations where it is a net-positive for the producer. Just a funny anecdote, but my main project is a SaaS application. We were in a meeting with one company who was demoing something for us, and we caught that they were using my app as one of their dependencies! One of our customers was reselling it to them, through a proxy, obviously against contract. Our company was still really small at the time, it got brought up with the CEO. He decided to just let it slide and to add something to the API response saying that the API was ours and what our website was.