Black copys

Inner · Post by **Inner** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 7:58 pm

Or maybe underestamating there skills has been the worlds biggest error.

Paul · Post by **Paul** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 9:17 pm

LOL @ Inner

I think you completely missed my point.

Basically I was saying it is pointless to waste your time trying to code protection schemes instead of actually designing your apps.
Let someone else who has made it their life job worry about slowing crackers and protecting your app from lost income. This will allow YOU to dedicate all your time to develop your app into something people will pay good money for.

Inner · Post by **Inner** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 9:21 pm

Ahhh I see now I get your point

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 9:58 pm

Heres a very interesting article about one shareware writers experience with piracy.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/ubb/n ... cle=000052

The standard argument for piracy is that software is overpriced. The fact that PB is so inexpensive yet still pirated shows that this is just an excuse.

Some bleat on about poor people not being able to buy software, but remember that most people are poor because somebody is unwilling to pay them the true value for there goods and labour. Those who refuse to pay a developer the true value for their labours are behaving the same way as the multinationals who refuse to pay a third world farmer the true value of their goods.

Anybody who can afford to spend there all of there time hacking software and giving it away must have alternative means. Most of us have to earn an honest buck!

Every time the hackers succeed in defeating a shareware developer, then that person is forced to return to the corporate treadmill and the dream of making a living off our own software is extinguished for the rest of us.

Inner · Post by **Inner** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 10:15 pm

You _really_ need to keep in mind this;

What you think is cheap others will think is damned expensive, it depends on your budget on how much you can aford, for example PB cost $122NZD - Excluding P&P

Someone on the sickness benift over here (taking me as an example) will get $200NZD per week, my rent cost $220 (I'm married & have people live with me so I can _just get by_, & I have 3 children), food costs $100 per week, then there is power bill, phone bill, internet bill, & 3 Kids. we get by only by the grace of the living God some weeks, we also are supported by food banks some weeks too, now when you can find the slightest dollar to find to pay for it out of my budget I'd be glad to hear it, my wife gets about $90NZD, result you'd have to be _very_ highly paid at least in this country and have a job, I have no hope of getting one even if I wanted too, I have agrophobia & social disorder, my only enter-action with other people is mainly over the net. (bar the people I live with).

To someone that is working, yes that's a fare price to someone like me it's a incermountable double heighted everest, which is only made more of a headacke to climb by the fact I have no VESA card, so I did the only thing I could do, asked to be a beta tester and be a ginny pig, which is fine with me.

Sorry but comments like "it's so cheap" about any software not just PB, really upset me, because it's obvious there not thinking about anyone else but there own pocket.

-- sorry if that offends it might. 8O

ricardo · Post by **ricardo** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:04 am

In a near future cracks could be stopped using internet, just checking if the application is running with a valid userkey and just letting run 1 instance for every valid user.
At this moment if your software is not internet related, its difficult to use this scheme because many users will complain if their must be online to use it...

In my own experience, having some apps with a huge rate of weekly downloads but finding cracks often (keygens) i just change my application key method weekly and the keygen stops immediatly.
I know that there are full-appsite but haven't found one offering my apps (3,5 MG download) and if i can't find it then most users will not find it neither.

One f**k site show statistics and i see that more than 25,000 peoples download the keygen for my software from that site in the past year!!!
Yes, and im paying the bandwith for the downloads!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, changing the key method every week, i don't find any keygen of the newer version since the last two months.

Maybe its not the best or ideal solution, but its the only one that i find and seems to work.

Amiga5k · Post by **Amiga5k** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 3:28 am

@dmoc:

No. Don't think I ever heard of/played with a 6510 but I do still have an Acorn 6502. Processor and parallel port on one euro card, cassette interface, hex keypad and hex display on the other euro card. Still works!

The 6510 was a fairly rare processor used in some obscure computer called the Commodore 64. Only about 20 million were ever produced, but you may be able to find one for sale on e-bay...

On the copy protection topic, it's really a never ending 'war' because there are people who consider it a technical challenge to 'crack' a piece of software. And then there are the people who, on the other side, spend their time coming up with new ways to thwart these guys. But as Inner pointed out, it takes only a matter of hours or days at the most in the hands of skilled expert to remove or bypass the protection scheme. As a result, you'll find that copy protection is on the downswing, and the software companies have found new ways to generate extra cash: Upgrades, crossgrades, add-ons, how-to books, etc. All of which are aimed at the legitimate user.

When the Pentium 4 (or was it 3?) first came out, Intel had put individual serial numbers on the processor that would identify THAT computer and could have made it MUCH easier for companies to verify that you are the actual owner, etc. Unfortunately, some watchdog group panicked and said that this would lead to websites et al 'keeping an eye on you' no matter where you went online, etc. Of course, Intel took out this feature and websites can still track where you go

Russell

geoff · Post by **geoff** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 12:11 pm

I think there is a lot of nonsense talked about "cracking".
There are two activities.

1) Cracking of encrypted data or programs.
2) Removing password and other protection from clear programs.

Crackers would like us to believe they are clever enough to unencrypt any encrypted data. They aren't. It is easy to encrypt data with a 20 character password that is beyond even the resources of the NSA to decrypt in the foreseeable future. The popular press thinks strong encryption can be broken by "little johnny" in his bedroom with his home computer. This is a myth.

Ultimately the greatest problem is the anonymity of the net, or indeed the telephone network. If you sell anything this way, you have no real idea who you are selling to. The issue is not "genius code crackers", just petty thievery by customers with false names.

Sell something you can identify to someone you can identify and the incentive for this kind of dishonesty would be greatly reduced.

PB · Post by PB » Mon Jun 09, 2003 12:32 pm

> That is why it makes much more sense to package your software with a
> protection system from a company that does this for a living instead of
> wasting your time trying to develop your own.

Not really... their schemes get cracked anyway, and you've just wasted
your money paying for their useless scheme. I wouldn't take that risk.
Pay them and then find a 2k keygen on a web site? Heart-crushing.

> The standard argument for piracy is that software is overpriced.

It is. I bet that if every app sold was only US $5, then everyone would buy
it instead of pirating it. It'll never happen, of course, but still...

> When the Pentium 4 (or was it 3?) first came out, Intel had put individual
> serial numbers on the processor that would identify THAT computer and
> could have made it MUCH easier for companies to verify that you are
> the actual owner

Nope, the software would be cracked to bypass the serial number check.
A lot of people tend to forget that. Any hardware check is easily bypassed.

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:24 pm

Inner,

I appreciate that things are hard for yourself and others, and I especiallly respect that you have choosen the role of beta tester over pirate.

However, if people are to make a living for themselves, then an effective economy is essential. If small outfits are chased out of the market by pirates then that leaves us at the mercy of the corporate giants, those who have the resources necessary to survive.

ricardo · Post by **ricardo** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 7:34 pm

PB wrote:> That is why it makes much more sense to package your software with a
> protection system from a company that does this for a living instead of
> wasting your time trying to develop your own.

Not really... their schemes get cracked anyway, and you've just wasted
your money paying for their useless scheme. I wouldn't take that risk.
Pay them and then find a 2k keygen on a web site? Heart-crushing.

Agree.

I download armadillo once and then i notice that if you buy the cheaper version ($100 US, not so cheap!) they generate ONE key for you software, the key will be the same for ALL your users, so if one publish the key bye bye you are dead... i send armadillo's people an email asking about and they said me that this risk is real!!! They advise me to buy another version ($199) to avoid this risk!!!!

I cant trust in people making business that way.

PB · Post by PB » Tue Jun 10, 2003 2:14 am

> In a near future cracks could be stopped using internet, just checking if
> the application is running with a valid userkey and just letting run 1
> instance for every valid user.

Doesn't work -- Quake 3 tried it, and the crackers just released a cracked
exe with the internet check hacked out. Crackers will always win. Always.

Amiga5k · Post by **Amiga5k** » Tue Jun 10, 2003 7:03 am

Maybe Fantasie software could sell us the license to use their compiler online and we would just e-mail the source to them and get the exe back upon completed compilation? You'd have to log in to have access, and then.... what a pain in the a** this would be! Maybe if the internet were 10 times faster and Fantasie had several super fast servers able to compile at a moments notice? Nah

Too bad cartridges with 'license' encryption hardware aren't available for the PC... (Not that cartridges aren't crackable, but to burn a new one requires special hardware, etc). Maybe a USB version of a catridge...

Nah

Russell

Inner · Post by **Inner** » Tue Jun 10, 2003 8:16 am

GedB: I'm glad you can see my point of view, and I agree with you too.. also these people small timers should know what it's like to try and live for the poor, and have compashion on those with very little, and instead of cursifying them give them jobs on the project if they want it so bad.

Amiga5k · Post by **Amiga5k** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 8:43 pm

I've been poor, too. But if I can afford a computer, I can certainly afford a $60 piece of software even though I may have to save up for it. It'll be worth it in the end because you won't have to worry about asking technical questions hoping they don't require you to be a registered user (if you have a 'free' copy), etc.

Before the internet there was still cracking going on, of course (via your local BBS - remember those?

). But the internet has made it soooo much easier that we forget that cracked versions of software were not generally easy to come by back then unless you 'knew somebody'. So we were forced to save our pennies more so than we are now. At least back then you had to know someone who bought it, and THEN you made an extra backup for your friend(s). Nowadays you don't even have to make the initial purchase if you know where to look, and people are getting smarter in that respect.

Russell