Moral questions aside - the best way to prevent cracking is to prevent the
need to crack it. Id proved this by giving away millions of copies of Doom
and selling the rest for a good price. When the quality/price ratio goes
less than 1, you've setup a prime situation for someone to steal your work.
Sell a good product for a good price and no one will want to steal your
programs.
btw - Stealing is stealing. Period. I have cracked code in the past in order
to make backups for my own archival purposes and none other. Anyone who
cracks code and distributes it is only contributing to the reason for higher
prices elsewhere.
} -----Original Message-----
} From: Ryan Minnig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
} Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 1999 9:47 AM
} To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
} Subject: Re: cracking site - how do we shut it down?
}
}
} You will never be able to stop people from cracking your
} software. Heck,
} there have even been times when I had to resort to doing my
} own cracking
} to use a 'time limited' or some sort of 'shareware internet
} registration'
} to be able to use the full version. The long and short of it
} is as long
} as there is software people want to use and it's more cost
} effective to
} spend hours downloading (or, heaven forbid, cracking yourself) people
} will find a way to crack it. If you don't want it cracked (very fast
} that is) you will have to devote considerable resources to
} finding a way
} to make it uncrackable as long as possible (i.e. long enough
} for you to
} make a profit off of it). Remember there are high school and college
} students that have many free hours to spend doing this sort
} of thing, and
} also working people, but just with not as much free time.
}
} In my opinion,
} Q. Is downloading full versions of cracked software wrong?
} A. Probably.
}
} Q. Is downloading full (trial) versions of software from the
} internet or
} CD provided by the author/company then cracking it yourself wrong?
} A. No. If a person/company is too lazy or stupid to think
} through their
} copy protection ahead of time they are just looking for trouble. And
} yes, it would be foolish to use the same scheme on multiple peices of
} software to better code reuse (like M$ Office, OS, Bookshelf,
} Developer
} studio.......)
}
} For all you software engineers out there like me. At least perform a
} checksum on your code before you allow the OS (Palm or otherwise) to
} execute it to stop the inexperienced hacker from NOPing or
} changing BEQs
} to BNEs. (and yes, I know it is a little difficult to do
} this when not
} in an embedded system, using someone elses OS, but if you don't, be
} prepared for many crackers of all ages to use you software in
} a matter of
} minutes, hours or days)
}
} Just my thoughts on the subject matter.
}
} <-------------------------------->
} Ryan C. Minnig
} Software Engineer
}
}
