How to remove software cracks and keygens from file hosting sites | Hacker News Reader

How to remove software cracks and keygens from file hosting sites

successfulsoftware.net

15 pointsadmp22 comments

"Billions of dollars are lost every year from illegal downloads of music, movies and software"

The industry has yet to present proof to this statement other than: estimate the number of downloads and do a dumb multiplication with retail prices.

Exactly. And as has been said and cited before, those who have cracked versions may never use them, or very well may never have bought it to begin with (a user is not by default a client - but they have the potential to become one). Congress put out a report stating that piracy actually (in some way, be it minor or not) helped "digital sales"

I find it frustrating that my lawfully purchased software is sometimes much more difficult to run (keys, registration, ads before it starts up e.g. EA Games) than my friends running pirated copies.

Not only that, but those who didn't spend their money on {software|music|movies} very likely managed to spend it on something else.

There is no giant pirate treasure hoard, where "pirates" cache these "billions of dollars every year", and we would not all be billions of dollars richer if only these pirates would give their money to the software / entertainment industries instead.

"Congress put out a report stating that piracy actually (in some way, be it minor or not) helped "digital sales"

"minor or not"

So did it help or didn't it? I don't know how they could ever prove this. How do you prove intent, one way or another? By asking people that pirated software if they would have purchased?

If companies didn't actively try to fight piracy (even if it doesn't work that well), they would eventually go out of business. This is because free versions would become easier for the masses to obtain than the paid version and nobody would be willing to pay money for something they can easily get for free. The only reason it works for big companies like Microsoft and Adobe is because they can take the financial hit. Most small software companies can't.

The same thing is happening with software developers and open source. Companies are slowly realizing that they can get the software they need for free. Sure, they can hire a developer to make changes to it, but that developer doesn't need a college education and can be paid much less (or they just outsource it to India, Russia, or the Philippines).

"I find it frustrating that my lawfully purchased software is sometimes much more difficult to run (keys, registration, ads before it starts up e.g. EA Games) than my friends running pirated copies."

Blame the pirates. Remember that these protections were built as a result of rampant piracy. DRM wasn't around during the Napster days.

Personally, I don't even sell apps anymore..only services. This way, there's nothing to pirate. I suppose this will be the end result of piracy: all commercial software will be services that need to be paid on a monthly basis.

I also can't help thinking that piracy helps the incumbent by protecting the market at the bottom end. I'm pretty sure low cost or open source alternatives to, say, Photoshop would have a lot more traction if the option to pirate it wasn't there.

Yup. If I couldn't pirate Photoshop, I'd be pretty handy with GIMP by now.

Counterpoint: Cory Doctorow points out that the newcomer's enemy is not piracy, it's obscurity. If you have an awesome piece of intellectual property that nobody knows about, people copying and downloading can put it on the map.

Didn't try out the software mentioned in the post myself, but at first glance it seems the guest blogger has ironically created a desktop search tool for warez

That's the free part too, so anyone can use it.

Although I suppose it won't be long until a cracked version of CrackTracker appears on those file hosting websites.

Another interesting concept would be to package this in a DLL and include it in the software you want it to protect. When someone runs a cracked copy, it will go see if it can find any relevant links in the browser's history and then auto-report them.

No need to crack the software if you only use it as a keygen search tool.

But man.. Reporting browser history to an unrelated software vendor.. Do you by any chance work at SONY?

> Imagine if this 70% didn’t exist or it was converted to regular paying customers!

Two hugely different scenarios.

In the first one, your software is suddenly only 30% as popular as it is now. Imagine if there was no way to run Photoshop except to pay the $700 for a version. I wonder how popular and indispensible it would be to companies that pay for it, then.

I couldn't play my legally purchased copy of KOTOR II thanks to the DRM without cracking it.

I'd argue that cracks, even if not KeyGens, have legal applications. Especially now when some companies include DRM which might cripple your game should they go out of business and their servers go down.

Even though I can see why this is a flawed argument, I feel the need to make it anyway: Cracks aren't illegal some countries, either.

[edit: replaced an 'or' with an 'and'. This mistake happens when I code too, sadly!)

This is potentially useful information, but whilst reading it I was yet again alarmed by exactly how easy the DMCA makes it to send threatening copyright infringement notices.

In fairness, sending them has always been easy. The DMCA just means that people have to listen to them.

He left out the part where if you misuse the DMCA takedown notices, it's a crime.

Yeah, and he is dangerously close to suggesting that you can DMCA keygens or cracks -- if you didn't write it, you can't DMCA it.

Sure, if someone's redistributing your program you can, but if they just wrote a keygen, you don't have copyright in that, and filing a DMCA notice in that instance would be illegal.

I suspect that any crack site worth its salt is hosted in one of the 300-odd nations of the world where the DMCA doesn't apply (and, specifically, in the subset of those that don't have anything similar).

"Thankfully for the ISV, torrent use is on the decline. People prefer direct downloads of the full package instead of slower peer-to-peer downloads."

Wishful thinking unfortunately.

The CrackTracker tool mentioned at the end looks interesting. I've not seen an attempt to tackle the huge number of shady warez sites before.

What would be really interesting to see would be if someone uses this tool to remove cracks for their software can tell us if there is an appreciable increase in the number of sales afterwards. That way we can get some real hard evidence for the real impact that software piracy has on desktop software.

Am I crazy, or could the pirates also use his tracker tool to find cracks in the first place?

> Imagine if this 70% didn’t exist or it was converted to regular paying customers!

Imagine whatever you want, but most of the people are probably using it because it's free. This is why the numbers touted by the anti-piracy industries are so ridiculous.

Whatever you do, it doesn't matter. A boatload of companies have tried to fiercely combat piracy - not a single success. So why even bother and waste money in various methods, it only delays (in a matter of days ?) the crack.

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