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How Can Software be Protected from Piracy ?

posted by janrinok on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:37AM   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: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Saturday March 22 2014, @01:47PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday March 22 2014, @01:47PM (#19692) Homepage Journal

    When a good customer with installs it on another machine, we aren't going to go after them. Not worth turning a good customer to someone else's customer.

    You're a smarter businessman than Microsoft employs. How to lose customers. [cnet.com] Thanks to Microsoft and the BSA, the Ernie Ball corporation is running Linux and using very little proprietary software and nothing from Microsoft.

    "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."

    Ball's IT crew settled on a potpourri of open-source software--Red Hat's version of Linux, the OpenOffice office suite, Mozilla's Web browser--plus a few proprietary applications that couldn't be duplicated by open source. Ball, whose father, Ernie, founded the company, says the transition was a breeze, and since then he's been happy to extol the virtues of open-source software to anyone who asks. He spoke with CNET News.com about his experience.

    Look how hated the RIAA is. They're idiots, too.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
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