🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <18580@mindlink.bc.ca>, Marc_North@mindlink.bc.ca (Marc North)
writes:

> Can someone please point me to where I can find information about how to
> implement a copy protection system into my programs? I've searched high and
> low, both electronically and in print media and I cannot seem to find any
> references to even concepts, let alone specific techniques in this matter.
> 
> My aim is to include some sort of code into my program that would, ideally,
> render any unauthorized copy of an executable unusable.

Stop wasting your time.

If you are dead set on copy-protecting your program, bite the bullet and
buy dongles.  The simple reason is that anything that can be done with
software can be undone with software and its unlikely that you could
come up with something sufficiently "different" from all the previous
attempts to achieve s/w only copy protection --in a reasonably short
time frame-- that the cost of dongle's would quickly be outweighed by
your additional development time.  As you are unlikely to devise
something that either won't be quickly cracked by someone else or that
isn't already "broken" by an existing copy-protection breaker, you might
as well admit defeat before you begin.

Also, note that many people won't purchase/use copy-protected s/w.  This
is not because they are pirates or out to defraud you.  In fact, the
implicit assumption on the vendor's part that the customer is likely to
be up to something nefarious can be sufficiently off-putting in itself. 
Historically copy-protection systems have had a poor run, in that they
often fail to work correctly on certain combinations of hardware, or
they conflict with other valid software, etc, etc.

I'm not saying that dongles are -necessarily- any better in this regard,
but they seem to be more stable -- the other day I was talking to
someone who has SEVEN dongles hanging off his printer port!  Still, some
people tend to balk at dongle-protected s/w too, so it's not a panacea.

To get away with any kind of copy- (or dongle-) protection these days
you basically have to have a "captive market" -- you must have the only
app for a certain job, or by far the clearly most impressive one (the
"industry leader" syndrome), or be doing the work on contract to the
purchasers.  These conditions apply in (some) "vertical" or niche
markets, but that's virtually it.

I'd suggest you rethink unless your product clearly fits one of the
categories described in the last paragraph.

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 Nick FitzGerald, PC Applications Consultant, CSC, Uni of Canterbury, N.Z.
 n.fitzgerald@csc.canterbury.ac.nz  TEL:+64(3)364 2337, FAX:+64(3)364 2332