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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) by Foobar Bazbot on Sunday March 23 2014, @07:42AM
Well, I agree. But you're the one advocating that registered users should hide for fear of mod abuse; I'm just saying anyone who does feel the need to hide should hide behind an opaque object, while you're saying we should hand them a sheet of plexiglass and assure them that it's good concealment, and can't be seen through without "additional skill and effort".
"Ignoring the effort required" is silly, because absent any real benefit, the effort required is enough reason not to implement it.
But I'll play along: ignoring the cost of implementation, the downside is providing users a false sense of security, leading them to post pieces of information across many posts that, in total, represents a profile they'd rather not share, in the belief that any aggregation of these pieces will be limited by human memory.