Re: Software protection

From: Metal Dave (metal_at_spam.spam)
Date: 01/06/05

  • Next message: Bjørge Sæther: "Re: Iterating through the attributes of a structure" 
    Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 15:55:50 -0800

    On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Bruce Roberts wrote:

    >
    > developing protection seems pointless to me. However, it makes sense to
    > include some basic protection just to discourage the general population.
    > Sort of like putting a fence around a front yard. Its not going to keep out
    > the bad guys, but at least the neighbors will use the sidewalk.
    >

    Also, everyone seems to be assuming that these schemes, be it hardware
    dongle based, keygen based, etc. are intended to defeat hackers or greedy
    users. In my company's case (we sell our software as a loss leader to sell
    our hardware, where we make most of our money), we include a hardware
    dongle to defeat any unscruplous *dealers* of our software. These dealers
    might "forget" to submit a purchase order for the software when they go
    out and do an end user installation, upgrade two customers with the same
    installation cd, etc. Or worse, they might employ a tech who might violate
    our licensing agreement simply by ignorance of where and how he can setup
    our software, rather than by intention to steal. Many of these dealers
    don't have techs who can competantly use a computer, never mind
    defeat even the simplest software protection scheme, so as long as we
    can prevent these less serious offenses we're happy. We don't ship out a
    hardware dongle until the purchase order is in, and after that point they
    can do whatever they want with it while we remain comfortable they will
    only be able to activate one site with that key. Sure, a dealer could
    always employ someone just to defeat our scheme but at that point you have
    a legimate business employing an engineer to do something very very
    illegal and easy to prove if we ever notice (which we probably will,
    unless they've also duplicated our hardware at a cost below our invoice
    price and thus can avoid ordering it from us!). That's much different than
    having to worry about some dude cracking your latest video game and
    posting it on the web for all to see. If there's a small chance someone
    could bypass it on an installation here and there, well it's a loss leader
    anyway. As long as the dealers soing dozens or hundreds of installs behave
    and pay the software fees we're happy.

    Note I'm not the biggest fan of our choice to use a hardware dongle, but
    from the point of view that it's a reasonably appropriate tool for the
    job (which is to keep our dealers behaved, rather than defeat crackers)
    I can certainly live with it. Sure the "snail mail" aspect sucks along
    with some other things, but given that we only have to keep track of
    hundreds, or at worst (a few) thousands of dongles it's not overwhelming.
    Also IME the instructions for the aforementioned techs, to whom the
    concept of software activation can seem overwhelming, it's a pretty simple
    process to plug something into a usb or parallel port.

        Dave

  • Next message: Bjørge Sæther: "Re: Iterating through the attributes of a structure"

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