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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: 1) by gander on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:55PM

    by gander (526) on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:55PM (#19774) Homepage

    Lots of good commentary here, but it really depends on the market. If it is something that a lot of people want Tinder [gotinder.com], then a small price to make it not worth the hassle of pirating and you will be hugely successful. Something with a very limited number of potential customers like EESof electronic EDA [eesof.com] will have a very different dynamic. A full package can cost $75K. Worth it? If you do high frequency microwave circuit design, it is essential.

    Some people claim that that price should be free, but the number of people to develop, test and continuously revise that software is large. Of course, if you make it too difficult to keep legit, even after you charge that much money, you just feed the temptation to pirate.

    No real easy answers