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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: 4, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Friday March 21 2014, @11:50PM
The second the compile completes, toss your PC in a volcano. Literally. Code on a laptop, take it to the rim of an active volcano, away from any wifi connections or other link to the outside world, compile, and toss it in. If you distribute it, someone will pirate it. If there's no DRM, people will distribute it. If there is DRM, people will crack it - if only for the bragging rights - and distribute it. I forget what game it was (I'm thinking The Witcher...?), but there was one game that came out in DRM and DRM-free flavors. The first popular torrent was a cracked DRM copy.
Asking for a foolproof way to stop piracy is like asking for a foolproof way to stop robberies or shoplifting or littering or jaywalking or literally any other crime. If it were possible to bring defection to nil someone would have figured it out because every dictatorship in the world would do anything to anyone for any amount of money to make certain crimes (like plotting against the government) impossible. If it is possible someone will do it.
One must strike the right balance, but the problem is the balance has dozens of pans, not just two. It's not cost of piracy vs. cost of DRM, it's cost of piracy vs. cost of DRM vs. convenience to customer vs. keeping investors happy vs. cost of support vs. cost of lost goodwill (people don't like being treated like crooks) vs. bad word-of-mouth (any security will catch a few innocents in its net, and you can bet they'll take to Twitter to rant about it) vs. etc. etc. etc.
Ultimately, what's best depends on what you're selling. Games, if you're not AAA then about the most onerous you can get is Steam (and for some of us, even that's too much). The more in-demand the product, the worse you can get because people will put up with more before giving up. High-demand games can require their own user account/login/Origin-type affair. Rare things like software for running a vinyl cutter or screen reader software for the blind can get away with everything short of murder simply because their software so expensive that any level of DRM is fiscally justified and their competition is nonexistent. What are you going to do? Cut all your vinyl by hand? Regrow your eyes? If it's too rare to be on cracker's radar and critical to someone's livelihood, you can make the software one-install only and boo hoo if your HDD crashes.
"Serial number/activation key" isn't the best, perhaps, but it strikes the best balance for the companies that use it.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:26AM
You're right on, there. While software copy protection itself is fairly new, the ideas behind it are not. People trying to keep each other compliant is ancient. DRM is just that…but…on a computer!