“And if the software was delivered digitally, please keep track of our key for us. We’re forgetful.”
Thank you, Steam.
http://www.steampowered.com/
What? No biometrics? CROCK! lol
They could just put the key into the installer like they do with Visual Studio, but I guess that is just too much work.
There’s really no excuse to steal software. There’s so much free software out there. If you say you can’t afford it… Well I can’t afford a Porche so should I just go over to the car dealer and take one?
WGA is a half-cocked piece of software.
- it is proven fact that false positives do happen, and happen often.
- it is easily bypassed with relative ease
I believe that even by Microsoft standards, WGA fails in every possible way. Or does it? Was this intended from a design standpoint? It’s easy to say that you are losing ‘billions’ per year due to Piracy, because it is not easy to prove either way. Eliminating (read: ‘vastly-reducing’) piracy would provide a surefire means to an end… the revenue increase that year would indeed indicate exactly what you were losing for that specific timeframe. On top of that, public opinion would be that you should lower your product prices, after all you’ve been claiming that piracy drove the price up there in the first place. As far as large software corporations, to beat piracy is to beat ones self.
Point-blank. Microsoft do NOT want to beat pirates. Their trials and tribulations regarding WGA are a farce at best, how could a company with so much experience and expertise possibly create WGA with so many fundamental problems that it ends up costing legit users so much?
Beating pirates is useless, those who do not pay do so for a reason. Those who are paying… get them to pay twice. This is reflected even in their EULA when it was first released (now more relaxed).
I may be paranoid… but still, I call it how I see it.
on paying for anything at all:
if it’s easier to steal than to buy, you have a problem. this applies to everything (digital, as many people wouldn’t just go into a store and steal stuff). it seems that noone actually notices that. buying music on the internet still isn’t as easy as buying, and you can’t hear it once to see if you like it, you can just download it illegally, decide you do like it and then think about going thru the hassle of buying.
i don’t want to go into semi unrelated topics here tho…
microsoft (namely gates) says: "The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written."
now they have a yearly profit in the 10s of billions of dollars. yet they try to fight piracy with new genuine advantage tools and the ever more restricting eula. instead of letting someone who bought an operating system use that same operating system on all computers he owns himself, maybe make it easier to buy (online, download), and cheaper.
Tell me as soon as I’ve entered a bad value in the key. Why should I have to go back and pore over my entry to figure out which letter or number I’ve screwed up? You’re the computer, remember? This is what you’re good at.
Sorry, I should have been more clear here. I mean prevent me from entering keys that can’t possibly be correct based on the key characterset, eg, “%” or whatever. Also, dynamically validate the entire key with a visual thumbs up/down when it’s completely entered-- don’t make me click OK to find out the key is invalid.
I wish more companies would take Apple’s stance – not only has the OS never required a serial, but the few apps of theirs that ever have are slowly but surely having the requirement removed (the latest version of Logic being the latest to come to mind). And it’s not because they’re a “hardware company.”
Are you kidding me? Every Mac is the world’s largest hardware dongle. Ask yourself this: why can’t you virtualize OS OX? Hmm.
I did find a comparison of “honor system” shareware vs. “nagware” shareware which was interesting. Summary: nagging works. a href="http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/articles/why-do-people-register-shareware.html"http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/articles/why-do-people-register-shareware.html/a
Fascinating result-- this '93-'94 experiment shows a similar 80% reduction in payment when you put people on the honor system.
Apple, has provided the peelable sticker for its iWork package. I immediately made the ubiquitous backup of the DVD then applied the sticker to the case for the backup and one in the master.
Kudos to Apple for taking that step at least. As for other Apple software and registration processes? Non-existant for Leopard which REQUIRES its own hardware anyway.
However, given that an Apple user COULD have more than one qualifying Mac and then install that new copy of Leopard onto those others, it seems kind of pointless not to have some kind of restriction imposed. Apple must not have really cared about that one for some reason. With iWork, you have to enter the key then it makes its trip out to a validation server in la-la-land, thereby preventing the installation of it on other Macs. With the Family Pack edition, the server keeps track of how many times it’s been installed and whatever unique identifier for the hardware it’s been installed on. In that case, you can install it any number of times you like on the same machine, as you would expect.
What I find curious, is the Leopard “no register” policy. Leopard was over $100. iWork: under $100. I don’t quite get it. Apple is basicaly giving away Leopard (arguably the best OS in recent years…)
Parallels (VM software for Mac - ROCKS!) for Mac has its own registration policy, but it doesn’t take into account multiple installations on multiple Macs. But again, it only runs on Mac. Halfway there on the registration/anti-piracy front.
And I have to agree that Vista’s piracy rate could be more attributed to the lower upgrade rate. Hardware manufacturers (HP, Dell, etc.) are pressured into selling Vista at a low rate with new PCs, and pressured into selling XP at a higher rate with the same PCs. With the problems involved with software/hardware compatability in Vista, a lot of XP users aren’t upgrading, and the only way to insure your PC itself is Vista compliant is to buy that new PC. With a downturn in the economy and the rising gas prices, etc., new PC sales are also not climbing like they did in past years. With all that, you would possibly have a lower piracy rating in Vista.
Personally, I think XP is a decent OS, and Vista still has some issues to work out. But that’s not the topic of discussion…
From my previous comment…
- it is easily bypassed with relative ease
Ignore my bad English there… it is Tuesday and I’m still warming up 
I can’t help but feel that Microsoft did pretty OK with making money despite everyone pirating their software. Heck, they’re still doing better than just about anyone despite the fact that people still pirate their software. Bill has been the richest man on the planet for years, even if he isn’t right now. Yet somehow, they are still complaining over people pirating their software and “stealing” from them.
I guess the lesson is simply that the rich always want to be richer, no matter what.
Intrusive? That’s dongles that screw up your system. Really, a serial is painless compared to challenge/response or the plastic crap taking up USB ports, not to mention the inconvenience those are with laptops. There are people who have to use USB hubs full of dongles just so they can run all their software. Oh well, at least that’s better than the tail of LPT-dongles I saw in most CAD shops.
One thing the Flash 5 installer did was show when you completed the serial if it was correct. That’s probably a better solution than showing whether it’s correct while typing.
The purpose of selling license keys is to try make digital copies of software behave a bit like physical items, so it’s fundamentally on pretty weak ground. The only reason still we do it is that no-one has worked out a better business model that reliably (and profitably) for pure software development companies, now that selling actual software media is not a valuable service.
It would be really cool to see MS or someone else invest resources in looking at solutions for smaller software development firms, rather than relying on the current fraction of paying customers to accept a worse experience than the dishonest ones.
Every Mac is the world’s largest hardware dongle.
I got a chuckle out of this, especially following right behind your comment with my Mac talk.
Technically, Windows (insert flavor here) is designed to also work only on one platform: the PC. In essence: a dongle.
With Apple’s recent Intel and Boot Camp push, yes, you can install and run XP or Vista on a Mac, or even run a VM with one those or a lower version (I have a DOS 6.22 VM so I can finish a few games I never finished way back when…).
The only reason I can think of there being no Mac VM is Apple still hasn’t let go of its low level hardware code. I remember way back when they considered it, but after market and technology analysis, they found that they could better profit from a closed and higher quality machine. As opposed to what happened in the PC world and cheaper hardware, lowered quality controls, numerous compatibility issues, blah, blah blah. Look at how hard it is to set up your Windows PC today? Sure you can configure it anyway you like, but will all of your software/hardware work with that new video card? I’ve run into several issues playing games because of a cd-rom driver, or a video driver.
Again, that’s all another topic…
…I should have said “solutions that scale down to smaller development firms”. Software as a service might work for Google-sized, or at least Red Hat-sized, companies, but the smaller ISVs are stuck with license keys unless/until somebody figures out a better revenue model, and it puts them in an awkward place.
Are those real keys you are reproducing? I can’t tell you how unimpressed I was when some thickos at a PR agency had a valid licence key for my software printed in a wedding magazine (meaning anyone could download and use the software for free - until I invalidated the key 24 hours later).
Are you kidding me? Every Mac is the world’s largest hardware dongle. Ask yourself this: why can’t you virtualize OS OX? Hmm.
You can.
It does take hacks, though.
Another problem with keys that developers should avoid: don’t encode an expiry date within the key! There is one particular software product I purchased many years ago (PMMail) where the key contains some kind of date stamp. So the software can only be installed within X number of days after the key is sent. This becomes especially annoying whenever I would re-install my computer systems every few years. Every time I had to contact the vendor since my previous key would no longer work. If we pay the money to purchase the software, at the very least we should be allowed to install it when we want.
I recently bought a compilation of several games in the “Command and Conquer” series. I was then prompted to enter something like 6 to 8 different CD keys! That’s about 20 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Why the company didn’t just put one freakin’ CD key on it and be done with it is beyond me. This is a fine example of why pirating is so popular. I’m sure that with a little searching, I could have gotten the same software – for free – without typing a small novel of random alphanumerics.
OS X might not have any copy protection (because, face it, you purchased the OS with the hardware) but Apple’s other products sure as hell do. In fact, they’re every bit as obnoxious as MS’s.
Even the demo versions of Apple software (like final cut and motion) require getting emailed time-sensitive activation keys.
There is less piracy on Vista because people who can pirate things would rather eat their own feet than use such thing as Vista.
What is the ratio of people reading previous comments before posting their own? Must be like 1:10e30.