Dev.SN

How Can Software be Protected from Piracy ?

posted by janrinok on Friday March 21 2014, @10:37PM   
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 ?"

• Re:You're asking the wrong question. Re:You're asking the wrong question. (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:24AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:24AM (#19658)

  giving users 10 mod points all at once that expire very quickly seems to promote these sort of "mod attacks"

  I don't think a quick expiry time is a big factor in this kind of attack (assuming that's what has happened here). If expiry time was longer, someone tempted to be a bad moderator would then be more able to wait for a story that they were particularly keen to influence, and still be able to use all 10 mod points on that one story.

  I know the expiry of points is tough psychologically, because it feels like you've wasted them. But actually the system can be (and I suspect already is) designed so that the overall amount of moderation happening is fairly constant, even on days when a higher proportion than normal of users failed to use their points.

  Instead, maybe we shouldn't get to choose which stories we could use mod points in? So, the system chooses potential stories for us? Again, there's a psychological issue there, but perhaps not insurmountable.

  Maybe we should limit to 5 points per story? But in the past I've used all 10 points on just 1 story and felt justified in doing so.

   
  Perhaps rather than countermeasures for this specific issue, and for the other issue you mentioned (one person being targeted), we just need to promote more heavily what counts as good moderation in general. To start with, instead of saying "you have 10 mod points", it could say "you have the possibility of 10 mod points. Click here to accept" which then takes you to the screen of moderation guidelines, "Do you understand these guidelines? Yes / No".

  And maybe meta-moderation is part of the answer?

   
  (Posting AC to avoid un-un-doing the example of bad moderation that triggered this discussion.)

  (N.B. I had already decided to cancel out Tork's down-mod even before I saw his complaint about it, so please have some faith that 1 bad apple will normally be buried under 20 good apples, so to speak.)

  Parent

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		+1
  Insightful=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Insightful' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		1

• Re:You're asking the wrong question. (Score: 1) by Refugee from beyond on Saturday March 22 2014, @08:55AM

  by Refugee from beyond (2699) on Saturday March 22 2014, @08:55AM (#19676)

  >Maybe we should limit to 5 points per story?

  Where can I vote for 3?

  Parent