There is less piracy on Vista because people who can pirate things
would rather eat their own feet than use such thing as Vista.
To be fair to Microsoft, they seem to have realised there are a few problems with Vista and have now released an upgrade to it, called XP, which has fixed most of them. There’s a review here:
http://dotnet.org.za/codingsanity/archive/2007/12/14/review-windows-xp.aspx
Tiger Technologies are another company that provide excellent support, with sensible keys that can copied and pasted and are not unnecessarily long, the ability to install the software on another computer without re-purchase and access to the registration number online if it has been lost.
Alas they seem to have stopped developing ‘Holiday Lights’ - a desktop decoration package that I used to love on Mac OS9 and also worked great on old Windows, but not on new systems I am told.
I think there’s probably about around 10000000000000000000000000000000 people posting here without reading previous comments for every person who does. I wonder what others think?
q"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."/q
If that’s the case, anyone can crack the secret key, simply by trying each character on the keyboard, no matter how long the key is. Am I missing the point?
If that’s the case, anyone can crack the secret key, simply by trying
each character on the keyboard, no matter how long the key is. Am I
missing the point?
You’re certainly missing the many, many other people who posted the exact same observation way back at the beginning of this blog.
Dave (on Mac hardware issues): True enough…
D.W. (on comparing Windows install on PC to a dongle): If you read the EULA, which most people have not, Windows is only supported on IBM PC type hardware. Since this limits what architecture Windows can be installed on, this makes the PC a dongle. This dongle is one that EVERYONE (except Apple, until recently) makes.
But doesn’t all software require a dongle of sorts though? The machine to run it on?
Dave (on upgrading to XP): Good one… I’m considering the move too. 
As far as keys and copyright infringement go, if I release a software project, I tack on a copyright statement, a “no warranty” statement, and release it open source. Why? Most of what I do is in C#. You can take Reflector and view my code. Do I want to spend money on an obfuscator? No. Do I pirate one? No. It’s easier and more legal to use my method. Can a copyright be removed unknowningly in this case? Sure. Do I care? No. Have I made a useful change in someone’s life? I hope so.
A friend fo mine made a statement many years ago, long before this topic was of such an issue: locks are meant to keep honest people out. This still holds true today.
“Personally I think that registration keys are used a bit too much. If I buy software on a CD/DVD, why can’t a unique key be printed on the CD/DVD?”
Yeah right. With SecuROM and similar copy protection schemes there is. The CD itself is the key. (Yes, that means every once in a while you want to play a game, they want you to find out the original CD (which has been put out of reach of children for a reason) and put in this “key” for them.)
So if “serial numbers are annoying”, what is this then?
I try to read as many comments at the beginning and the end as possible. Once the numbers start getting high, you can’t really expect people to read /all/ of them.
Speaking as someone who’s gotten so sick of proprietary software I’ve basically sworn not to use it again, I think I may have some useful information for you:
If you don’t want people pirating your stuff, let them know there are alternatives. They may not need 100% of the functionality your app provides. The person either believes information should be free, in which case they should go use Free Software instead, believes that it shouldn’t be free, in which case they should pay for it, or knows what they’re doing by pirating is wrong and does it anyway.
I try to turn every pirate I meet into a Free Software user. The harder you make piracy for them, the easier you make what I do. Good luck making life easy for legitimate users in the mean time. You’re going to need it or you may just turn a bunch of them into people like me, who may in turn code a Free alternative to your software out of anger with you, and frustration over license management schemes.
You might try requiring them to call in with a code, which will be replaced with another code read to them over the phone before the software works. Pirates aren’t likely to be as comfortable doing that.
The problem with telling you that your key is invalid is not only a problem because it would provide people with a trial and error approach to finding a valid key, but also because it depends on the algorithm.
Chances are, it won’t know if the key is valid until you enter in the full length (though many know on a block by block basis) of the key because the algorithm asserts an equation based on the values.
It’s sad but true that they can’t help you without hurting themselves here. Unfortunately, every key eventually gets reversed engineered anyway.
Where’s the %@# key? Well very often, printed on the %@# CD which is at the moment in the %*@# drive… So to install the software you have first to copy it somewhere… and then figure out if the mistake is in the copy or in the key entry…
License keys / activation codes are one form of security on the application. Anyone who deals with security issues knows security is not digital - its analog: Nothing is completely secure, you can only make something “more secure”. So you balance functionality, ease of use, customer relationships, and supportability, with “security”. Its not easy.
Example: Certain types of DRM can make things more secure (and certain types of DRM are useless for security), but it can also make the file less functional, harder to use, piss off the customers, and be hard to support across platforms and OS versions.
Microsoft recently stated that the piracy rate
of Vista is half that of XP, largely due to
improvements in their Windows Genuine Advantage
program-- Microsoft’s global registration key
validation service.
I think it’s because people would rather use XP.
As for the keys themselves, I don’t care about the length, as long as I get it by e-mail. Just let me copy paste the thing. Also, I would prefer if I did not need Internet access to enter the key. Believe it or not, sometimes I am in a position where I have to enter a key without Internet access. Also, I’d like to use your application to read my documents a decade from now, even if your company is dead by then.
“Fascinating result-- this '93-'94 experiment shows a similar 80% reduction in payment when you put people on the honor system.”
My company moved to adding registration because we ran into a lot of situations where people were not paying for our very niche and very expensive software. Oddly enough, we have a near 100% payment now after 60 days when the registration is finally, truly required.
Have you seen the ‘Graphical license card’ implemented for 1Password (Mac software)?
a href="http://tearesolutions.com/2007/04/thoughts_on_graphical_license_cards.html"http://tearesolutions.com/2007/04/thoughts_on_graphical_license_cards.html/a
Basically its a digital solution to registering software - and very nice it is too.
“I’ll choose biased data over no data whatsoever, every time.”
This is the stupidest thing I’ve read all week. If you can’t verify the data, then the whole discussion is bogus.
I hate entering codes, it is so annoying, Digital would be great
Can you explain in which way entering codes is analog and how some other system would be digital. I can’t think of anything more digital than digits.
Linux. My “piracy” rate dropped dead. I actually spend more money now on software, I donate however much I wish/can afford.
“Tell me as soon as I’ve entered a bad value in the key.”
You didn’t think this through… this makes bruteforcing trivial.
Does that Vista Home key work? Time for me to give it a try.
What I hate it when important info is put on a tiny errata sheet that is easily lost.
I recently bricked a Nintendo DS game (Age of Kings DS) because the WARNING!!! sheet that said don’t use a three character profile name was missing.
It was missing because I bought it from one of those stores that opens the original packaging and keeps the game cartridge in a lockbox to cut down on shoplifting.
Using commonly mistaken characters in the key
…
Excessively long keys
…
Not separating the key into blocks
It’s on purpose: to avoid sight picking the key and discourage lazy people.
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.
Suppose you have a 20 alphanumeric characters key and that the error is signaled in real time (by shifting the color of a widget …).
If I write a program that automatically type a character and test if the key is correct and takes 1 second to do it, it will take 20*36=720 seconds aka 12 minutes to crack the key in the worst case.