I'm glad this topic came up when it did. Over the weekend I found that two of my own apps had finally been cracked. (Yay, for success.) This got me thinking more about the problem than I had before.
My views are pretty passive on the situation. I accept that piracy will happen and that it's likely not worth my time trying to fight it. So, my new approach is to at a minimum be informed about it. I'm doing this by pushing out two new builds of my apps that 1) blacklist the pirated serial numbers, of course, and 2) display a "please don't pirate me" warning message when it detects the user trying to steal one of them. Here's a screenshot of the warning: http://skitch.com/tylerhall/npngf/virtualhostx And 3) the app now phone's home to Shine *only* on launch and *only* if the app is being pirated. I have *absolutely* no desire (and I think it's wrong) to phone home on legitimate users. BUT for pirates? I wanted to know how widespread the problem is. Is it three users? Or three thousand? I'm not sending any personally identifiable information. Just a unique guid that lets me track how many individual users are using the pirated serials. I'd love to get everyone else's thoughts on this approach as I can see how it's borderline on what some might consider bad behavior. Cheers. Tyler -- http://clickontyler.com On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Houdah - ML Pierre Bernard <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dan! > > The press release is coming out on Monday morning. I did not want it to get > out over the weekend when the news sites don't publish updates. > > Obviously specifying the version number worsens things. Overall my web pages > have a PageRank of 5. Some had a PR of 6 but I recently lost that. > I however tried a couple of other product names with version numbers and did > not dig up all that many pirate sites. > E.g. for "sandvox 1.6.5" I found no pirated copy in the first 10 result pages. > > Of course, I am kinda flattered that pirates rushed to crack HoudahSpot > within hours after the release. I however would like to know if they actually > succeeded. Past pirates distributions had only the nag screen removed, but > the limitation still in place. LOL. > > > On Dec 27, 2009, at 5:07 PM, Dan Wood wrote: > >> Pierre -- >> >> I can imagine that this must be frustrating! >> >> I think that this is just going to happen. It's inevitable. >> >> However, I think that perhaps something else is going on. I think that if >> you can work on improving your search engine placement overall, that the >> legitimate sites will overpower the pirate sites. >> >> I can use an example of Fraser Speir's Viewfinder. Shortly after its >> release, I did a bit of googling and he had quickly gotten the "badge of >> honor" of being cracked." Because his app was so new, it hadn't really made >> it into the mainstream websites. The pirate sites are, unfortunately, fairly >> well placed by Google, and I"m guessed that there is so much activity that >> they tend to get scanned daily, if not more frequent. >> >> Either this will come naturally -- try the query again in a few days, and >> see if more legitimate websites (that outrank the pirate sites) show up in >> the first few pages of Google results. E.g. websites like your own, Twitter, >> Yahoo groups, MacUpdate, Apple Downloads, Cnet, facebook, squidoo, IUseThis, >> VersionTracker, MacNN, TUAW, etc. >> >> Actually, you should take into account that many of these websites may >> require some human editorial contribution, and a lot of people are not >> working much during the Winter (northern hemisphere) holidays like Festivus >> and Christmas. >> >> If you don't start seeing the legitimate websites out-rank the pirate sites >> in a few days, then this probably means that these websites are not noticing >> your application, and you need to work a some Search Engine Optimization to >> get more links into your own website, and also other websites talking about >> your product. >> >> (BTW I didn't find any press releases about HoudahSpot 2.6; the only >> legitimate posts about 2.6 that I could find were just the software tracker >> sites and echoes of that.) >> >> I have posted a bunch of tips that hopefully will be useful over on the >> Karelia marketing blog: http://www.karelia.com/marketing/ .... Good luck! >> >> Dan >> >> Another note: It seems to me that specifying the version number in the >> search string is more likely to turn up the >> >> On Dec 27, 2009, at 3:31 AM, Houdah - ML Pierre Bernard wrote: >> >> > Hi! >> > >> > I have just released HoudahSpot 2.6. The press release is coming out on >> > Monday. Out of curiosity, I ran a Google search for "HoudahSpot 2.6" to >> > see how far the news had already spread. >> > >> > The bad news: most first and second page results are links to cracked >> > copies. http://www.google.com/search?q=houdahspot+2.6 >> > >> > I can't tell if the cracked copy actually works. RapidShare won't let me >> > download without a Premium membership. >> > >> > Yet I am quite shocked by how fast and how far this has spread. This >> > happened within hours of the release. >> > >> > I have sent an email to RapidShare asking them to take down the file. But >> > they don't seem to be in a rush to react. Anyway I don't see this do much >> > good. The cracker will always be faster at uploading the file than I will >> > be at getting those sites take it down. >> > >> > Pierre >> > >> > - - - >> > Houdah Software s. à r. l. >> > http://www.houdah.com >> > >> > HoudahGeo: One-stop photo geocoding >> > HoudahSpot: Powerful Spotlight frontend >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > ------------------------------------ >> > >> > MacSB email guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/2g55d6 >> > Use MacSB-Talk for off topic messages: >> > http://groups.google.com/group/macsb-talk >> > Yahoo! Groups Links >> > >> > >> > >> >> > > - - - > Houdah Software s. à r. l. > http://www.houdah.com > > HoudahGeo: One-stop photo geocoding > HoudahSpot: Powerful Spotlight frontend > > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > ------------------------------------ > > MacSB email guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/2g55d6 > Use MacSB-Talk for off topic messages: > http://groups.google.com/group/macsb-talk > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > >
