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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 ?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:05PM
I have seen an interesting variation on this once. Pretty much the same setup but on a duplicate key it simply (on updates) popped up a simple:
"You are using a duplicate key. Do you want to:
a) Proceed [default]
b) reassign the key to this machine as primary installation
c) purchase a new key for $Y"
and acted accordingly, was nice enough, impled the extra install was a simple change of machine of installation, and allowed a small discount if you went thru the hassle (this software was mainly distributed with a printed manual and such, the discount was less then the cost of ordering the manual separatly)