What's the right amount of copy protection?
I'm currently working on a piece of commercial software that will be available through a download and will use a license key to activate it. The software is aimed at helping people schedule projects and will be targeted mostly to corporate users.
With the recent Windows Vista black screen of death, it got me thinking about what sort of measures I should go through to prevent unauthorized users from using the software.
While I don't wish to burden legitimate users, I do want to prevent most piracy. How much copy protection is appropriate?
Is it acceptable for the software to phone home? If so, what data is appropriate to report on? The license key? Software version? What about a unique installation ID?
Should I disable license keys for small amounts of piracy, like when there's 3 active installations of the software? What about widespread piracy where we detect dozens or hundreds of uses of the same license key? Would a simple message stating the software may be pirated with instructions on how to purchase a valid license be sufficient?
As a more general question, what licensing schemes have you seen that work the best?
With the recent Windows Vista black screen of death, it got me thinking about what sort of measures I should go through to prevent unauthorized users from using the software.
While I don't wish to burden legitimate users, I do want to prevent most piracy. How much copy protection is appropriate?
Is it acceptable for the software to phone home? If so, what data is appropriate to report on? The license key? Software version? What about a unique installation ID?
Should I disable license keys for small amounts of piracy, like when there's 3 active installations of the software? What about widespread piracy where we detect dozens or hundreds of uses of the same license key? Would a simple message stating the software may be pirated with instructions on how to purchase a valid license be sufficient?
As a more general question, what licensing schemes have you seen that work the best?
Labels: development, Software
posted by Marc at
11:35 AM
2 Comments:
A license key would be perfectly acceptable by my standards. It isn't personally identifiable information that the content owner doesn't already have. Any information a license key can provide was likely provided in order to get said key, right?
A software version is non-intrusive as well, since the same information is reported by most updating systems, to ensure patches get distributed to those who need them (unless the updater just queries the current version number, and compares it locally against your installed version).
A unique installation ID, though... since that information serves to identify the user (or the installation), and isn't directly provided to the content author, and serves minimal benefit (if any) to the end user... it just feels like data mining.
Regarding a threshold for disabling license keys, that really depends on how the disabling occurs. If it's automatic, then it is probably too aggressive to disable the keys for limited apparent piracy. Especially if your software is targeted at a corporate audience. Anything that slams the brakes on productivity is a good reason to start looking for another product.
Track the number of active installs for a given key, yes. Flag the key, absolutely. Disable it... manually?
Even better, locate the contact info for the offending keys, and send a friendly notification to them, offering the purchase of additional keys at a volume discount appropriate to the number of excess installations. This turns piracy into a potential sale.
By
Anonymous, At
9/11/2007 12:03 PM
My question hit slashdot. yay.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/11/1845204
By
Marc, At
9/12/2007 5:41 AM
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