4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you control piracy of your products?

• bowerbird 13y ago
  how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? -bowerbird
• yeukhon 13y ago
  There is no way to stop it. I think you have to let that go. The amount of money you put into defending your code will be a big loss in the end. 1. Make your product pricing reasonable. 2. Invest money into customer support. 3. Take survey and reward users as often as possible. 4. Ask users what they want and actually implement new features (in your case cover the missing topics as quickly as possible.) A good example is Django Best Practice. I am sure people are pirating that book (and I have pirated other books before too). But I purchased that book because I think the authors are very knowledgeable and they do very good customer support. People will come to you and buy your service if your contents are great. Give up some content freely and make the rest profitable? In the end some people will pirate and spread free stuff around.
• bromagosa 13y ago
  I'm both a programmer and a musician. As a programmer I think bits are bits, they are meant to be replicated. I make my software free (open) and charge for the service, not the product. As a musician, pretty much the same thing. I make most of my earnings from gigs. I see albums as marketing, a polished support for what you could get in a digital form for free. Some people still prefer the physical form, especially if you offer something more original than a classic plastic case digipak. I'm actually genuinely happy when I see my albums shared in online forums. So my advice would be: provide a service valuable enough that users are willing to pay for it even if they could find the contents somewhere else.
  • yeukhon 13y ago
    I like when you say "bits are bits"