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Comment by bitexploder | Hacker News Reader

Even be cheeky. Detect when the software is cracked (signature/binary hash changed) and message the user “we see your version is corrupt or cracked, you may want to reinstall. If you are using this software without paying for it <something>”. You can invest some time in obfuscation and more frequent releases, but I would not spend a lot of effort on it.

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am I the only one that thinks that the remote possibility of showing this message to a legit customer by mistake outweights any benefit it could bring?

you are not gonna guilt anyone into not pirating and if the message blocks or is annoying, crackers are gonna circumvent it just like they did the license check.

A lot of big players like adobe and microsoft don't seem to think this is a problem. In the past I have gotten cracks for legitimately purchased software from both because their licensing system is/was crap and would block access thinking my copy was not valid.

Pretty bad when the pirated versions of your software work better than the legit copy.

> A lot of big players like adobe and microsoft don't seem to think this is a problem

Microsoft has bribed their way into having power of police in Argentina.

the can legally obligate you to give them a report of how many computers and what operating systems you are using and they can request a judge's order to enter your company with the police to audit your infrastructure if they think you are not telling them the truth.

I they will do this kind of stuff without fear of losing face I don't think they will care if some legit customer gets hit by a false positive.

I think the inclusion of 'corrupt' gives legitimate users a mental excuse from this problem.

One good idea is to time-delay that response -- hackers generally won't sit around for a month, or even a week, and see if your app will start responding differently.

Of course, they'll probably re-hack it at that point, but often the first hacked version ends up being the most spread around one.

Also a note about the dangers of cracked software. There could be malware, viruses, etc. The value becomes much smaller to use something that could ransomware your system.

Then, cracked software becomes free advertising!

> Also a note about the dangers of cracked software. There could be malware, viruses, etc. The value becomes much smaller to use something that could ransomware your system.

I've always thought this was kind of an old wives' tale FUD. Long time back when I used to hoist the ol Jolly Roger, the pirated versions of software seemed to always be pristine copies. Reputable release groups had their reputation in mind and would go out of their way to release clean copies, or even go so far as to remove the official company-shipped malware like all those offers you used to get during install to Also Get This Toolbar! Reputable crack groups were the same way--leave no trace and use the smallest, most minimal binary modification possible.

Same with pirated movies: The pirate releases are often better than the official releases, containing more subtitle languages, stripping off marketing and FBI warnings, and so on.

Problem with pirated movies these days (and for a long time) is that you have so many variations: garbage like different encoding schemes because some loser still watches the films on their DivX player or re-encoded in other methods. Then you have different release groups releasing their own variations and you have to keep on top of all these silly labeling schemes on the filenames. It all leads to clutter on the scene sites and no true guarantee that you are getting the pristine release. These days, I acquire the 4K Blue-Ray, rip the data, strip off the DRM, and make my own pristine release that I know for sure is the best of the best. Its got all the ads/copyright stuff stripped and all tracks, subtitles added.

Neither of those things you mentioned (poor/strange encoding, silly filenames) are a problem beyond minor inconvenience. Any standard release will be x264 or x265 with AAC or DTS, and a simple program like Filebot will lookup all the files on imdb and rename them for you automatically. It is great to support the industry that makes things you like, but ripping blu-rays is orders of magnitudes more work (I do it though, since I like the commentary tracks, I just wanted to correct your misconceptions).

It depends on your perspective. If your intention is to enjoy the film with the best possible quality, then it goes from being an inconvenience to being a real problem. If you don't care, then yes it is just an inconvenience. I'm not saying it is a dealbreaker for everyone, but it is a dealbreaker for me.

I've only gotten malware twice in my life. It was on windows and in came from the ads on a reputable normal website.

You could always do the Windows 10 Activation model.

If you don't activate Windows 10, you have no ability to personalize your PC (change wallpaper, colors, Lock Screen image, etc.) But you can still use it - which makes it annoying, but still functional.

After a few weeks without activating, it also adds an always-visible watermark warning to "Activate your PC." But it still lets you use it.

Perhaps the OP could do similar. Where... he has his standard system of copy protection, but then adds additional checks that stamp watermarks on printed documents, or show a watermark about illegal copy, doesn't allow adding business information to documents, so forth...

Maybe that's even the trial version. Always free, forever - but certain features disabled and lots of watermarks.

The cracked versions will simply disable all these anti-features.

All you will do is annoy legitimate users.

The risk in any of those measures is mis-identifying a copy as "cracked" and refusing to function fully for a paying customer. Sometimes that customer will be understanding, but sometimes they'll just plain angry that you're selling them a license for thousands of dollars and then mess with their ability to get things done. And they usually won't be silent about it either.

You can totally do that when you're Microsoft because pretty much everybody hates you already but you have essentially a monopoly so what can they do? But it's very different when you're in a market where alternatives exist.

I think the idea is to put out a company-approved nagware "trial" version. It makes piracy less likely (because the benefit of a full cracked version is smaller) and gives you a sales channel to those who would have pirated it.

The downside is, people who would have paid might discover they're quite happy with the trial version.

You don't want to do this "immediately" after checking for pirated versions, that will be checked and cracked as well

Do it silently and maybe warn in a non-obvious way. But I wouldn't annoy the user too much

Parent is right, most of those pirating it wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Especially if it's a technical software with limited use (as opposed to a game, for example)

Probably a waste of time. If they've gone to the trouble of cracking, removing a nag screen is probably trivial.

This too will be trimmed from the cracked version just.

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