What copy protection technique do you use? [closed]

Answer 1

As mouviciel mentioned, nothing is perfect. Aim to gently encourage users who might buy your product to buy it, and forget about the people who never will.

Some general tips:

1. Don't bother implementing your own protection, unless you have experience doing so. This is an area where paying someone who's specialty is providing some type of licensing/protection is probably worthwhile (just keep in mind it won't be perfect).
2. Choose a license key system that is difficult to keygen. Again, picking a pre-built licensing system will likely suffice. Creating your own from scratch will likely not.
3. Take the time to properly integrate whatever licensing system you choose. If you just "protect/wrap" your executable(s), the protection will quickly be removed. Most licensing/protection products offer easy integration tools/macros that make automated cracking much more difficult.

For corporate software, the best thing you can do is make it easy for administrators to ensure they are within the license boundaries (# of instances/installs, etc.). Provide a central place for them to verify this, and gently remind them if they go slightly over, before you take any more drastic actions. In a large network environment, software licensing can get very complex for the IT dept. Make their job easier and they'll thank you.

Answer 2

For some products we (have to) use hardware dongles. Although they give a prety good copy protection, they are a real hassle for our customers.

All other software is protected by a software key. And yes you can copy those. But we have very good experience that customers don't do that. Without a key a program works normal, only you can't calculate the model and some print functions are disabled.

Answer 3

Good software doesn't need a protection. Your software will ever be copied, no mather what protection you choose.

So the best way to avoid illegal copies would be to make your software user-friendly, so that your customers are happy and satisfied with your product.

Answer 4

"The technical support is the dongle"

This doesn't apply to all applications, but for complex applications with higher price and lower sell volume, providing excellent support to your customers is the best way to be sure all your users are paying.

Answer 5

On desktop apps I've been using a Clarion Template (3rdParty, http://www.capesoft.com/accessories/secwinsp.htm).

With web apps, pretty much just been using the simple fact that the User has to log in, and tracking the activity. If they have an account, it means they've paid.

Desktop is a lot harder to track. As has been said, very easy to crack. Very much a case of:

Make it annoying for the Hackers, but as unobtrusive as possible for the Users

Answer 6

I know this post was submitted quite some time ago, but everyone always seems so negative when this subject is discussed. For obvious reasons I prefer not to say where I work but we use CodeMeter by Wibu-Systems US. We chose this as hackers didn't manage to hack this during a hacker competition.

Regarding all the questions you ask, it is really flexible and they offer a free SDK, which is how we tested before we purchased.