Re: Web activation
- From: "Grant Frisken" <grant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 26 Jan 2006 15:07:06 -0800
Hi Tull
We provide a very low cost ($US80) public key encrypted based
licensing solution that ensures that crackers can't generate legitimate
license keys by simply inspecting your downloadable evaluation code.
You can get more info and download an evaluation version at:
www.infralution.com/licensing.html
Even if you aren't interested in a commercial product you might want to
visit our website just to see some arguments for avoiding web
activation solutions. There is also a really good article on
CodeProject
(http://www.codeproject.com/gen/design/UnconventialWisdom.asp) about
the balance between protecting your software and annoying your
customers.
The reality is that just about any licensing and code protection scheme
can be bypassed. If you look at the crack sites you will find cracks
for all of the licensing and protection products. If the security
experts can't prevent their own products being cracked what hope do you
have. What you need is a scheme that prevents casual license abuse
without driving your legitimate customers nuts.
Regards
Grant Frisken
Infralution
Tull Clancey wrote:
> Thanks for your time on this, the support side of things is something I want
> to avoid at all costs, I've been in support for large companies before, and
> don't want to go back!!
>
> The apps I'm thinking of aren't huge and aren't going to sell for a great
> deal of money, this is why i don't want to use any 3rd party tools, software
> or hardware.
>
> To be honest if I sold a single license to a company who then install the
> software on several PC's, I'm not that bothered, what I want to avoid is
> that solftware being passed to other companies.
>
> At present I'm just wondering about the legality of collecting very simple
> network information from a Host PC.
>
> Maybe I'm thinking too much on this!
>
> Anyway, all your comments are greatfully recevied.
> Cheers,
> Tull.
>
> "Ken Halter" <Ken_Halter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:ehhW%23qeIGHA.1192@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > "Tull Clancey" <tull.clancey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> > news:dr8gk4$8c9$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> Hi all, hope someone can help point me in the right direction, or maybe
> >> just have a chat about the following.
> >>
> >
> > Adding to Cor's reply, if you "fingerprint" an app so it won't run on
> > another PC or the protection would break if the end user changes hardware,
> > be prepared for a flood of support calls. I change hardware so often that
> > something like this would drive me nuts. In MSs case, what they seem to be
> > doing is, eliminating the "casual" pirate. You know... the ones that say
> > "Hey! I just got a copy of XYZ.. Do you want me to burn one for you too?"
> > By placing that extra "fear factor" in a casual pirates head, they just
> > won't copy as often as they would otherwise.
> >
> > Hardware keys are also a pain. Especially for developers like me that tend
> > to take work home. If I had to crawl under my desk and unplug a dongle,
> > take it home, crawl under the desk there, install it and possibly deal
> > with "Missing Hardware" dialogs on either end, I don't think I'd do
> > homework at all <g> Besides, anyone capable of cracking software licensing
> > can do a little more research and find a way to bypass a dongle.
> >
> > There's a "fine line" that says "do I spend a whole bunch of time on my
> > protection scheme? or do I spend that time improving my product."
> >
> > If you're going to be charging a pile of money for your apps and/or
> > predict that you'll be selling copies in a "1000's per year" purchasing
> > environment, you might want to consider using InstallShield's Activation
> > Service. It's priced well out of my range but, if I had anything valuable
> > enough to protect with that much security, I'd do it.
> >
> > I'm not sure of their 'hand held device' support but I assume that, since
> > they support creating setup packages for these kind of devices, they also
> > support the protection of the software installed on these devices. arghhhh
> > their entire site changed so all of my links are broken... here's a start.
> >
> > Protecting Software
> > http://www.macrovision.com/solutions/software/protecting/index.shtml
> >
> > --
> > Ken Halter - MS-MVP-VB (visiting from VB6 world) - http://www.vbsight.com
> > Please keep all discussions in the groups..
> >
.
- References:
- Web activation
- From: Tull Clancey
- Re: Web activation
- From: Ken Halter
- Re: Web activation
- From: Tull Clancey
- Web activation
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