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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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 Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:30 pm Post subject: Joe Saltzman - Software Copy Protection is a waste of time. |
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If you don't know, Joe started the cd/dvd tutorial wagon that a lot of folk are jumping on. He is very well respected, and considered one of the "good guys". I thought some of you might be interested with his thoughts ...
| Quote: | Jan 21 2008 - Software Copy Protection is a waste of time.
January 21st, 2008
Filed under: 3DTutorial News — admin @ 8:33 am
This morning when I arrived at my office I had a number of letters from some well intentioned people who would like to convince me that they have a software copy protection system that works and is transparent.
To this I respectfully say thanks, but no thanks, I’m not interested.
Really, no one can convince me at this stage that software copy protection is worthwhile. To be blunt software copy protection only benefits one party… the people who develop software protection applications and who make a living selling a false sense of security to naive software developers who are paranoid about their balance sheets.
I have come to this conclusion after more than 20+ years of hands on experience with encryption and copy protection techniques/applications and they are ALL a major waste of time and effort.
I’ve got news for most of you, the rules of the software industry have changed and the general public has become much more demanding and sophisticated. The average software buying customer does not want to have anything to do with software that is copy protected because it is a royal pain in the ass for them and makes them feel like criminals. Trust me, it’s not good for business to make your loyal customers feel like criminals or to annoy them in any way whatsoever.
The reality of the situation is that there is NO such thing as truly transparent copy protection, all forms of copy protection impact the end users experience in a negative way. The fact is that security as it pertains to software (or anything else) is always a fine balance between strength and usability. That is to say, the better the protection is the more difficult the overall experience of usage becomes for the end user.
Customers simply don’t want to deal with serial numbers, dongles, server based authorization, key checks, you name it…. it’s all rubbish. What’s more there is no form of copy protection that actually works - trust me, I know. The truth of the matter is that any application that can run on a PC given some effort can be cracked, no matter how brilliant the protection is. I’ve got a lot of experience in this area and well trust me, I know this. At best software copy protection will only delay the inevitable from happening, but don’t fool yourself developers, if your software is worth cracking it can and will be cracked no matter what you try and do to protect it and this is simply the reality of doing business in the digital age.
Software developers have to get used to the idea that people are going to steal their IP and that there is nothing that can be done to prevent this. Look, I don’t like it but it is human nature and in the same way that a popular brick and mortar shop can’t prevent local kids from stealing, neither can software developers - it just happens, get used to it and accept a certain percentage of losses.
Yes, software copy protection can work (for a time) and can save some profits but guess what? The profits that you retain by using software protection will be lost in equal or greater amounts by customers that will avoid your software like the plague because you have decided to use it in the first place - so this is why software copy protection is a mugs game.
Again, it’s important to remember that this opinion is coming from someone who has used copy protection techniques for more than 2 decades and despite this background I have concluded that it is a complete and utter waste of time and energy.
But hey, to each his own I say. If you are a software developer who think there is a benefit in using software copy protection then I say go for it. Me, well, I want NO further part of using copy protection because in my experience it simply does not work (no matter what anyone claims). Moreover, my customers have let me know over the years how much they dislike copy protection and I simply have to respect and agree with that.
So this is why none of 3DTutorial.com’s future products will be copy protected.
Till next time…
Joe Saltzman
Founder/Director
3DTutorial.com |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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Having some pretty extensive experience of cracking professional protection (on Atari ST) I can absolutely support the point that no protection is guaranteed. There will always be something going on in the computer that needs to be working normally, so what I'd do was put an interrupt on that and force a stop when the decryption was done (in my case it was the keyboard interrupt, which 20 years later I can still remember as $118!).
If anyone ever used CuBase on the Atari between about 1986 and 2000 you probably had a copy that I cracked (it used a hardware dongle originally). I suppose I msut have cost them a lot of money, but I'm also certain that a lot of those people who used the software back then are now paid-up members, simply because they got a free 'in' at the beginning.
I don't agree with the article that all protection is pointless though. Of course a determined cracker can do it, but most users aren't determined crackers - so they can't just run off a copy for their pals on the day of release. The guy's being foolish in fact. Lots of people want stuff on the day of release and will happily pay for a working version (especially now with so many games incorporating netplay which is another tough part to crack as you're actually 'live'). |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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he's not really talking about games. The tutorials he does are for the softimage XSI modeling animation apps. These fellas used to cost .. shit i forget .. but something like 20,000 beer tokens a few years ago. Nowadays a tenth of that price, but still too much to pay for a toy, or something to learn with. So people will wait. Adobes photoshop is cracked a couple of days after release. I remember when 3dstudio max would be in my hands, cracked, days before the official release. I have a license for XSI and ZBrush but use cracked versions 'cause I can't be arsed with the dongle or the activation.
His tuts are the best, he was the first to encrypt his cd's, and nearly went bust on more than one occasion, lost his wife blah, blah, blah - but kept on. |
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