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Is it still worth it to protect our software against piracy? Are there reasonably effective ways to prevent or at least make piracy difficult?

gnat
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StanS
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    You may want to break this into separate questions, i.e. one for desktop app security, and one for website security (unless you're just taking about desktop software). – Jon Onstott Oct 07 '10 at 22:10
  • See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/515020/what-copy-protection-technique-do-you-use – mouviciel Oct 08 '10 at 07:47
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    Ref: [Copy Protection - Technical challenges](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_protection#Technical_challenges) – mctylr Jan 02 '12 at 19:45
  • Broader Ref: [Digital Rights Management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management) – Philip Jan 02 '12 at 20:01
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/109997/how-do-you-protect-your-software-from-illegal-distribution – quentin-starin Jan 03 '12 at 06:00
  • its not possible to prevent a file from being copied. I can clone the hdd sector by sector if I have to. In the end if I discovered even a single third-party file I was unable to delete, I would no longer use the program in question, and request a full refund on the product. – Ramhound Jan 03 '12 at 14:14
  • You could publish your thing as a free software (e.g. under GPLv3 license). Then, other entities might help you about license violations, e.g. http://gpl-violations.org/ – Basile Starynkevitch Aug 08 '15 at 16:47
  • These are really 2 questions in one, why and how. – LuckyLuke Skywalker Jun 24 '23 at 22:59

19 Answers19

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Not really. Any copy protection has to be 100% perfect, (which we all know is impossible,) or else all it will take is for one person anywhere in the world to come up with a working crack and post it on the Web.

If you want people to pay money for your product, copy protection is not the answer. It never has worked and never will. The answer lies in Economics 101: people will pay money for your product if they perceive its value to them as being greater than the price you are asking for it. Otherwise, they won't. Period.

Mason Wheeler
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    Well said! Copy protection is like waving a red rag to a bull and you'd be amazed how easy some are to subvert - witness the Sony 'Rootkit' CD copy protection that could be subverted by holding down Shift while you inserted the CD... – JBRWilkinson Oct 07 '10 at 22:22
  • @JBRWilkinson - Anyone ever subvert Rosetta Stone software? It's a pain to register esp. when you get a new computer, but seems pretty tight. – JeffO Oct 08 '10 at 00:23
  • @JBRWilkinson - It was Ctrl wasn't it? :P I've got a rosetta stone that seems to be working for free - full version! Never use it mind. – billy.bob Oct 08 '10 at 09:25
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    No, copy protection doesn't have to be 100% perfect. It just has to be good enough that the cost of cracking it outweigh the benefits to the cracker. – Kramii Oct 08 '10 at 09:44
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    -1: You don't have to do 100% perfect copy protection. We all know that every copy protection system can be defeated. But the average user will not bother to crack the software if the price is reasonable and the value of the software is high. – Wizard79 Oct 08 '10 at 09:52
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    @Kramii: However, all it takes is one cracker, and there can be a cracked version of your software on every warez site on the planet. Moreover, if the copy protection is at all intrusive, the pirates may be getting the better software. – David Thornley Oct 08 '10 at 13:51
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    @Jeff, yes, it's been cracked, just take a quick query at the pirate bay – Malfist Oct 08 '10 at 14:59
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    -1 100% copy protection isn't. And there's still lot of software companies making money on software applications. – Jonas Oct 08 '10 at 18:00
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    @David Thornley: True. The purpose of anti-piracy measures is to demotivate the cracker without demotivating legit users. – Kramii Oct 12 '10 at 12:06
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    @Kramii: And virtually all solutions have failed at that stated goal. In fact, I'd suggest that anti-piracy measures actually *motivate* the cracker, since it presents a new challenge, while giving the legit users a poorer experience. – greyfade Oct 13 '10 at 17:36
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    @Kramii, if the cost of cracking the protection outweighs the benefits, you are trying to make money off the wrong product. Having so little users no one knows anything about cracking isn't a good business plan either. –  Nov 23 '10 at 12:49
  • Yes and no. It‘s not all that simple – LuckyLuke Skywalker Jun 24 '23 at 23:00
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I would say "No" to both questions, without hesitation.

Is it still worth it to protect our software against piracy?

No, and a lot of companies and independent developers have demonstrated that there's no need.

The Humble Indie Bundle is an exceptionally good example of one possible way of making a killing in spite of active "piracy." In a single 3-week event, five developers made, together, almost US$900,000 on their five games (plus one), without DRM, and even without a concerted effort to control access to the download links. And despite rampant sharing by people who paid, an average of US$10 per copy was paid, 30% of which went to charity. (This is, admittedly, a rather exceptional example in that it's not the norm even for this kind of sale event, but it is a good demonstration of how non-standard sales models can work extremely well.)

Companies like Introversion Software and Stardock make a lot of money despite a 90% piracy rate.

Another good example is Illumination Software Creator, which is doing very well for itself.

Or look at Minecraft, which has chosen a "freemium" model and is earning (as of this week) the author $100,000 per day.

Even when people stop fighting "piracy," they tend to do very well for themselves.

Are there are reasonably effective ways to prevent or at least make piracy difficult?

No, and frankly, it's rather pointless. Software can and will be copied as easily as you copy values within your program. No matter what efforts you make to protect your software against "piracy," so long as the end-user will at any point have a copy of the program, someone will distribute it to others without cost.

The only two ways to prevent "piracy" are: Make your software a service, such as a web application, or open your source code (or otherwise license your software for free distribution).

The only way to discourage "piracy" of software with a price tag is to set a price more in line with the value your customers perceive in the product, or to attach that price to actual services (like providing support). No one will pay $60 for something they can get for free in another product.

(On a side note, I object to the term "piracy," since its etymology implies theft. Copyright infringement is not theft, no matter how you look at it, and to equate the two is intellectually dishonest. I would prefer a term like "illegitimate customer" or "untapped market.")

greyfade
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    Thank you for the terminology correction. Pirates are Somali naval terrorists, not kids in their parents' basements. ;) – Mason Wheeler Oct 07 '10 at 22:52
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    +1 just for "copyright infringement is not theft". I'd add more upvotes if I could; the rest of the answer's great. – Frank Shearar Oct 08 '10 at 08:54
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    What part of "taking something that doesn't belong to you" is *not* theft? – kindall Oct 08 '10 at 17:50
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    @kindall: The part where theft is defined as depriving someone of a physical good. If someone makes a copy of my software, they are not depriving me of my software. They may be illegally duplicating it, but they are most definitely not depriving me of it. – greyfade Oct 08 '10 at 19:46
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    What they have stolen is your exclusive right to make copies, not the item copied. This is in fact a significant deprivation for anyone who derives their livelihood from selling copies of their work. – kindall Oct 13 '10 at 16:39
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    @kindall: ... What? You still have the right to make copies. You can still make as many as you want. The fact that someone else has made a copy doesn't change that. To suggest that this *deprives* you of income is intellectually dishonest: What's to say that any of those copies would have been paid for in the first place? If someone else is making copies, all it means is that you're not providing something your customers want. – greyfade Oct 13 '10 at 17:30
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    The *exclusive* right. If someone else makes copies, your right to make copies is no longer exclusive. Whether this is of significant value to you depends on your business model, but if it wasn't you'd probably just release it to the public domain. – kindall Oct 13 '10 at 17:49
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    @kindall: Someone makes copies when they install your software. Someone makes copies when they back up their downloads or full system. It's rather silly to me to be concerned about the exclusivity of copying, since the nature of the beast is that it's so easy and common to make copies *willy-nilly.* Your argument implies that you feel you have the right to restrict or eliminate even this commonplace (and often necessary!) activity. -- Your exclusivity is a *legal grant*, not an inalienable right, or, for that matter, a *property* right. "Theft" is a term reserved exclusively for *property*. – greyfade Oct 13 '10 at 18:03
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    I'm not arguing that copyright is a useful concept in an era of easily-made copies. I'm arguing that violation of copyright *is theft* in the sense that your "legal grant" is being taken from you by the violator. That is my entire point. The other stuff you're talking about, I'm not arguing about. :-) – kindall Oct 13 '10 at 18:07
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    @kindall: My apologies for the wandering, then. However, I strongly contend that the legal grant is *not* being taken from you. You still have that legal right, and you can still enforce it in a Court of Law. No one can take it from you under any circumstances, barring a radical change in Law. Violation of Copyright is *merely* an infringement. To use a physical metaphor, you're saying that someone stepping on your lawn "takes away" your right to mow it. It's intellectually dishonest. – greyfade Oct 13 '10 at 18:23
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    Interesting point; I'll admit I've not considered that angle. Hmm. Thanks for the stimulating conversation. – kindall Oct 13 '10 at 18:29
  • Introversion were on the edge of bankruptcy. Not exactly floating in money. – Carra Apr 15 '11 at 17:45
  • So if Company A spends tens of millions of dollars developing a new drug to cure a disease that affects millions of people, and I copy the formula, and sell it as my own, that's not theft because I'm not depriving somebody of a physical good. OK. Now we're clear. Thanks. – Jim G. Mar 25 '12 at 10:17
  • [Piracy/File sharing - Why aren't songs, movies or books given for free?](http://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/6329/piracy-file-sharing-why-arent-songs-movies-or-books-given-for-free) – BCLC Aug 08 '15 at 16:08
  • @kindall So home taping was copyright infringement, theft or piracy? Also [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/488/) – BCLC Aug 08 '15 at 16:10
  • @greyfade I'm pro-file sharing, but pls explain the metaphor? Stepping on lawn = downloading a movie while mowing lawn = selling a DVD? – BCLC Aug 08 '15 at 16:16
  • @JimG. Some might make a distinction between piracy and file sharing. Piracy is when you do something like buy a DVD, make copies and then sell them. File sharing is when you don't sell them. In the case you presented you profited from someone else's work. A file sharing version of what you presented is maybe copying the formula for your own use or for someone else's use but not profiting from the medicine much like TPB seeders don't profit from seeding, I think. – BCLC Aug 08 '15 at 16:18
  • @BCLC: Stepping on a lawn or clipping some grass is not the same as stealing a lawnmower. Likewise, making a copy without authorization is not the same as stealing the master copy. The distinction in the metaphor is that the act of mowing a lawn (making copies *en masse*) is a very different act from someone stepping on your lawn (watching/using unauthorized copies), and no act of stepping on the lawn will deprive you of your mower (your right to copy.) The metaphor admittedly breaks down in that it doesn't account for market forces, but I think it holds. – greyfade Aug 08 '15 at 17:43
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    The point I'm making is that copies are an infinite resource. No number of copies will deplete that resource, so the idea of "theft" in this context is nonsensical. But, because making copies still requires some technical knowledge, it doesn't appreciably deplete the market, either. – greyfade Aug 08 '15 at 17:46
  • @greyfade I find the metaphor kind of weird. Is the grass the intellectual property? Does your metaphor assume the grass owner has a lot of grass? I think we can go with a better analogy: [Home Taping Is Killing Music](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music) or [Borrowing books](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdvL3FBwHEc&feature=youtu.be&t=239) – BCLC Aug 08 '15 at 19:15
  • @greyfade 'The point I'm making is that copies are an infinite resource. No number of copies will deplete that resource, so the idea of "theft" in this context is nonsensical. But, because making copies still requires some technical knowledge, it doesn't appreciably deplete the market, either.' Of course I understand and agree. I'm just wondering about the grass metaphor. – BCLC Aug 08 '15 at 19:17
  • @greyfade according to your definition, if I steal your money from your bank account, that's not theft, since it's not physical goods. – Lie Ryan Feb 27 '16 at 10:29
  • @LieRyan: Your understanding of my definition is incorrect. I was very clear: You can not steal something that is freely and easily *copied.* Money can not be freely *copied,* so your theft of my money deprives me of its use. Your "theft" of my software does not deprive me of its use, nor even of my ability to make money on new copies. – greyfade Feb 27 '16 at 22:47
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    @BCLC: Grass is, effectively, a reasonably infinite resource: When it's cut, it grows to fill the space again. – greyfade Feb 27 '16 at 22:50
  • @greyfade XD . . – BCLC Feb 29 '16 at 11:44
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Just because copy protection isn't 100% effective doesn't mean it's worthless. It keeps honest people honest. Customers need SOME incentive to pay for software and most of the time that's what copy protection provides. If your price is reasonable, most people aren't going to spend the time and effort trying to circumvent the protections you have in place. Of course, if the protections make the core functionality a bitch to use, that's another issue.

This blog post is an excellent evaluation of the value of copy protection: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/09/05/everything-you-need-to-know-about-registration-systems/

As far as a reasonably effective way to provide SOME protections for your software, I highly recommend Infralution Licensing System. It's inexpensive and performs well.

Nick Spreitzer
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Yes it is still useful, but don't spend to much time and money on that. If your software worth it, it will be purchased AND cracked. Regardless the efforts you put in the protection mechanism.

Too much protection as well as no protection will affects sales.

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    No protection definitely affects sales. Just ask Stardock. *Sins of a Solar Empire* was one of the best-selling games (if not the #1 game) of 2008. One of its major selling points was that it was 100% DRM free. – Mason Wheeler Oct 07 '10 at 22:19
  • If you really cares about it, puts a hard-lock mechanism. It is efficient enough and you not spends much time. – Pagotti Oct 08 '10 at 02:29
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    Hardlocks are as easy to crack as serial key locked software –  Oct 08 '10 at 05:26
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    I don't buy software with physical keys, online activation or that require you to be online to work correctly. Unless I have no choice. –  Oct 08 '10 at 06:07
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Give it away :)

Given that virtually all anti-piracy measures can be circumvented if someone is determined enough there's an argument for not doing anything.

Make your software useful and offer support to those that pay, thus getting the revenue and dedicated users.

One way to get revenue could be to have a "pro" version that unlocks extra features that needs to be paid for. This seems to be a popular approach. You need to be make sure that the unlocking of the pro features is a) easy for the customer but b) hard for the hacker.

ChrisF
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    -1: if there's no benefit in paying the software instead of using it for free, almost no one will pay. I suggest minimal and non intrusive copy protection, the average user will pay it if motivated. – Wizard79 Oct 08 '10 at 09:50
  • @Lorenzo - answer updated. – ChrisF Oct 08 '10 at 09:55
  • OK, now it is much more reasonable :) However, I think that making it hard for the hacker is just a loss of time: if someone want to pirate your software, he will do that regardless of the complexity. A very basic activation method should be enough. – Wizard79 Oct 08 '10 at 12:40
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    @Lorenzo - OK - perhaps I should have put "relatively hard". The presence of an activation method will mean the vast majority of users will either just stick with the free version or simply pay up. – ChrisF Oct 08 '10 at 12:43
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Don't spend much work on this, and don't make it intrusive.

There are two layers of copy protection that can possibly be worthwhile. One is to prevent the casual user from copying it, and one is to prevent anybody from copying it. There's nothing in between, since if any one person can crack your copy protection all the dedicated pirates in the world will have a copy. The second level is impossible, so don't even try. The first may have some value.

If you make the copy protection annoying, the pirate sites will have a better version available. Many people buy a legit copy of software, and then download an illegit to actually use. I really don't think you want to encourage honest people to download your stuff from pirate sites, and you don't want to annoy your paying customers too much.

You should stop worrying about piracy per se. For stand-alone service, pirates take nothing from you. Seriously. You still have everything you had before. What they might to is deprive you of possible sales. In other words, they can do nothing to you that an influential reviewer can't.

What you should be concerned about is revenue, and increasing the number of sales. Piracy can actually help that, by giving people some free trials and experience. Many people will buy the stuff they actually use. Some people attribute some of Microsoft's success to large numbers of people illicitly using their software. They're better off in the long run with hundreds of millions of Chinese using illegally copied Windows than perfectly legal Linux.

Don't pay attention to the number of illegitimate copies. They aren't, for the most part, lost sales. Pirates tend to accumulate large quantities of software they barely use, far beyond their ability to buy. Pay attention to your actual sales.

David Thornley
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First of all, I would boldly claim that you can never keep the administrator account from verbatim copying files on their machine.

However, regarding copying you could simply set the permissions on your executable files to 111 and make them belong to root, such that everybody may execute the file but not read it (thus not copy it). However, root will still be able to change that.

Since you cannot prevent the binary from being copied, and you are willing to manually install it on target systems. Compile them explicitly for that system and include a hash of the system configuration (e.g. hostname, hardware, ...). Check during runtime that you are running on a system that matches this configuration.

Still this will only make it harder to steal your software, not prevent it, because you can always take the binary, examine it and remove the part that checks for the correct machine.

All in all, doing this is usually a bad idea (IMHO) because it will cause problems to your customers (the last thing you want). If you really want to sell commercial software to people, bind them by law, not by hacks, to obey your terms and conditions.

bitmask
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No, not really. And depending on the used technology there may not even be a reasonable approach at all.

For example, there is nothing you can do to prevent decompilation of an SWF (e.g. with Sothink SWF Decompiler). It will give you pretty much exactly the source code you typed. Of course you can use code obfuscation, but that makes it only a tad more difficult to understand the code while doing nothing to e.g. prevent someone from decompiling your SWF, replacing your name and company logo and then recompile it again.

The same goes for JavaScript or ABAP (where you basically have to deliver the source code to the customer) and probably some other technologies as well.

On the other hand, copy-protection/DRM can seriously annoy your customers and give your company very bad publicity. Think of the various protection mechanisms employed by the gaming industry:

  • DRM components installing themselves as ring 0 drivers, making the system vulnerable to security and/or stability problems
  • protection software telling you to uninstall other applications before allowing the product to run
  • permanent online connection required to play a single-player game
  • limited installations or online activations, often used in combination with binding the product to a user account of some sort (usually this binding is irreversible)
  • etc.

Therefore you should always consider the negative impact any copy-protection measures you include in your product can have on your reputation and how much effort (development time, license costs, etc.) it requires to actually get that DRM stuff into your application. If you come to the conclusion that it's still worth the trouble then do it. But if you have any doubt that using DRM will actually hurt your business more than benefit it then simply don't do it.

Of course, requiring a CD key or employing a disc check to prevent John Doe from using Nero to provide his whole family with copies of your product is still reasonable. However, any measures that invade the customer's system by installing DRM drivers or something like that should be considered very carefully because of the previously stated reasons.

Baelnorn
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Ultimately you can't - it's just a question of how much time/money you want to spend compared to how much time/money the other guy wants to spend copying it.

Martin Beckett
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1) I do it SaaS way - Software as a Service

2) I make the software free for download and use, but requires a connection to a server for limited, paid access.

mauris
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The only dependable and relatively problem-free way I know of is to have the software "call home" and ask "Here is my serial number, am I a legal copy?" Of course the program needs to have an internet connection in order to do that, which might be thought of as a bit of a problem, but it gets remedied by including a "check for updates" option and doing the checking during that time.

Actually, even that is not exactly dependable without additional measures to prevent people from running version 1 build 1 for eternity, or people reverse-engineering your app and disabling the protection, but this is a good start in the right direction.

Mike Nakis
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If you don't add any protection or annoyance (i.e a nag screen), almost no one will pay for you work.

With a basic protection, the average user, really motivated to buy your software, will buy it, but avoid to make too complex its life: the customer is paying you, so be kind.

A good way to protect software is online activation. Of course keep in mind that every copy protection system may be overridden, so don't spend too much time in developing complex protection schemes: people that absolutely don't want or can't afford buying it will either crack it or skip it.

Wizard79
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    This assumes that people who pirate it would otherwise buy it. How do you know that people who pirate the software wouldn't just use something else if given no alternative? If people don't want to pay, they won't pay, even if it means getting an inferior product. – Matt Olenik Oct 08 '10 at 14:33
  • @Matt: no, people who pirate software would try to crack it, and would almost never buy it. This is a good reason to not spend too much time on a copy protection difficult to crack. My answer, instead, assumes that if you don't add any protection people that would buy it would just use it for free. – Wizard79 Oct 08 '10 at 15:54
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    @Lorenzo that's my point. You aren't going to force anyone into buying it by making it slightly inconvenient for them. – Matt Olenik Oct 08 '10 at 16:01
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    +1 The point is to stop casual pirates ("Hey, can you burn me a copy of that?"), not the dedicated serial pirates. Casual piracy is a crime of opportunity, and simple copy protection can remove the opportunity. – Steve S Oct 08 '10 at 16:12
  • @Steve: Not when a crack is "casually" available, one download away at a well-known site. – Mason Wheeler Oct 08 '10 at 17:03
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    @Mason: average user don't know well-known crack/serial sites. – Wizard79 Oct 08 '10 at 17:19
  • @Matt: a very annoying nag screen, or even better a trial time-bomb, is quite effective. The point is that you don't have to force "pirates" to buy the software (is a no-win situation), you have to give average people that paying gives a real value, of course the software has to be useful and with a reasonable quality/price ratio. – Wizard79 Oct 08 '10 at 17:23
  • @Lorenzo A nag screen and time trial aren't exactly anti-piracy. People here are talking about actual DRM that can prevent someone from distributing your software. If the average user isn't aware of crack and serial sites, you have nothing to fear from them as they'll either buy it or go elsewhere. – Matt Olenik Oct 08 '10 at 22:08
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I think, the solutions is placing all interested code in the server side and use thin client.

Zzz
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Give the software away for free as a 'lite' version. People who are serious about it can pay for the 'full' version and have their version somehow stamped to identify it. Don't stick their name in it - that's too easy to remove.

A better model is to manage payment from the server side. See my answer on pricing for more details.

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JBRWilkinson
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Depends on how valuable you deem your time and your IP.

Myself, if I was selling consumer-interesting software that would be likely to be pirated, I would work on an internet-based solution that would deliver encrypted binaries each program run-time.

Paul Nathan
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I'm considering selling my software to China, and considering how rampant software piracy is, I want to at least know who is stealing my software so I can get some metrics for Advertisers who may want to sell ads within my free app.

For that purpose I use SLP from http://www.inishtech.com/. I track all the users of my software, and get an idea how compliant people are. I don't expect much more than to use it as a reporting tool, but it's able to do much more.

makerofthings7
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  • I wouldn't buy your software. And if I would have to, I would crack it so as to not be tracked. – phresnel Nov 18 '13 at 15:51
  • @phresnel Would you purchase an app that had no ads or tracking? The free one is what I was talking about. – makerofthings7 Nov 18 '13 at 16:06
  • I have nothing against a bit of advertisement in a free (as in beer) version, but any form of tracking, "anonymous" or not, is undesirable to me. While I am not a typical app shopper, I have bought licenses or given away donation multiple times. If a software really helps me with what I do, it's worth the pennies to the author. – phresnel Nov 18 '13 at 22:47
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Give them more than just the software somehow. Free downloadable content for paid users and free upgrades and patches, training videos, cheap upgrades or free upgrades to the latest versions. You can also donate a bit of your profits to a charity, so the users have a feeling of giving something back when they buy your software.

If there are online features only make them accessible to paying users. Copy protection is a waste of time. Nowadays it's all about content and service, and not just giving someone a static exe and expecting to make free money after your costs are covered.

Tjaart
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I have a somewhat different view, for perhaps two reasons. First of all, I work for Agilis Software, a company in the license management business, and secondly a substantial portion of Agilis's business is not in protecting consumer/desktop software, but in protecting enterprise applications, embedded systems etc.

In the consumer/desktop space the arguments are well rehearsed above. Modern licensing systems can make activation unobtrusive and flexible for the user (as many companies have found with Agilis's Orion product activation system), but the decision in the end is a strategic one for the vendor.

With enterprise systems, and some consumer packages, the vendor offers more sophisticated pricing options than just a single perpetual desktop license. Subscription licenses, for example, are widely used, but if you don't include some secure mechanism for enforcing the subscription period the renewal rate will be very low (so you discounted your software from the perpetual-license price for nothing). Many vendors of more complex applications also want to offer different combinations of features to different markets, or to price features separately. Without a license manager to control which features are enabled you might have to provide a separate package for each customer and each upgrade, with all the operations work that entails. The user-count model is still very popular too, where the customer can have n licenses active at any one time; if you don't enforce this limit with a license server, it is very likely to be exceeded. Another model growing in popularity is usage-based licensing (usage-based licensing case study).

The enterprise customers themselves are well aware that once a software package is installed, despite the best intentions of IT and management, the agreed paper licensing terms are easily exceeded, exposing the company to unpleasant audits, penalty fees etc., so they prefer to have the licensing terms enforced if done by a secure, unobtrusive licensing system.

Dominic

Dominic
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Hmmm, only two solutions:

1) Release under GPL (or similar)

2) SaaS

firusvg
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