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How Can Software be Protected from Piracy ?

posted by janrinok on Friday March 21 2014, @10:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the questions-without-answers dept.

AnonTechie writes:

"Echoing a question asked on programmers.stackexchange.com - How can software be protected from piracy ?

It just seems a little hard to believe that with all of our technological advances and the billions of dollars spent on engineering the most unbelievable and mind-blowing software, we still have no other means of protecting against piracy than a "serial number/activation key." I'm sure a ton of money, maybe even billions, went into creating Windows 7 or Office and even Snow Leopard, yet I can get it for free in less than 20 minutes. Same for all of Adobe's products, which are probably the easiest. Can there exist a fool-proof and hack-proof method of protecting your software against piracy? If not realistically, could it be theoretically possible? Or no matter what mechanisms these companies deploy, can hackers always find a way around it ?"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by chromas on Friday March 21 2014, @11:20PM

    by chromas (34) on Friday March 21 2014, @11:20PM (#19590)

    Every time it goes wrong you pay for it with bad PR.

    And support costs. There are even legitimate paying customers who crack the software just to get around any problems the copy protection introduces.

    The software mentioned, and many others products, are as easy to get as download demo, insert key. Some do require a little patching. Nothing more complex. Yet the companies are still in business making software (even if it is buggy) and raking in moneys. Doesn't it say something that Adobe, Corel, MAXON, Microsoft (recently) and even Sony Creative Software (who acquired Sonic Foundry's products when they went Beta) just aren't that worried over buttpiracy?

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