🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec18.163540.21795@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> ematias@dgp.toronto.edu (Edgar Matias) writes:

>Well, I know for a fact that at least one of my customers has 
>violated the trust.  However, I like your scheme.  Question is:
>What do you do if/when you find a pirated copy?  Has it happend you
>you yet?

The goal of the scheme that I use is to make is clear WHO was licensed
to use the software; that is to identify the owner of the "license
key" information.  The idea was that people would be less likely to
share the copy of software that they bought if it can be traced back
to them.  All you can do is make is easier for the basically
trustworthy person to abide by the terms of his license.  Given enough
effort, any of these schemes can be broken.

In the case of my software, this "license key" information is a text
file which contains in plain text the owner of the software as well as
what features of the software are enabled, and expiration dates, etc.
It is secured in such a way to make it easy to detect when the file
has been modified, so the user can't just make his own file.  Perhaps
what I should do is imbed there user's phone number, VISA card number
and other personal information in the file to make it less likely to
be shared with his buddies.

Of course, my license key file approach is a bit more unwieldy since I
have to build one for each user.  Alternatively, you can use a long
string of characters to carry some of the information such as a unique
serial number, features, and expiration.  You can then crank these out
mechanically and still have a serial number to associate with the
original user.

What do you do when you find a pirated copy?  Well, I'm not a lawyer,
and I don't play one on the net.  I do have my own personal
bloodsucker, er, lawyer that I pay good money to for advice.  So
should you if you are seriously concerned about such issues.  There
is, of course, legal recourse against the original licensee of the
software and the pirate for violating the terms of the license and for
copyright violation.  How effective is this?  It all depends how much
time, effort and money you want to expend to pursue it.

Has it happend to me yet?  I don't think this is a question I'd answer
in public.

Look, what you really need is to tie the operation of the program to
the "owner" of the program in such a way that the user has to invest
some valuable interest that he doesn't want to share.  Perhaps his
credit card number?  Perhaps his RSA private key?  Public key
cryptography and digital signatures could be just the technology to
effectively deal with this problem.

louie