> -----Original Message----- > It's hard to put pressure on hackers in countries out of our > jurisdiction... like China, or Iran, or some such.
Most of the crackers are outside the U.S., and most of them aren't doing it just for fun -- there is big money to be made selling cracked software in many countries. In many countries (pretty much anywhere in Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union, most of Asia, etc.) the vast majority of software is illegal, sold by street vendors for 2 or 3 or 5 dollars per CD. Being first to crack, having a reputation for making reliable key generators, etc., can make crackers the preferred suppliers to criminal gangs who supply the street vendors. That equates to a good income for good crackers. Of course, if your application isn't all that popular, you're not so likely to attract the profit-oriented crackers. If it was even remotely possible to thwart crackers, then companies like Adobe and Microsoft would have figured out a way to do it, but every Adobe and Microsoft application is freely available in cracked versions from a thousand different sources. It's simply impossible to stop crackers. If you want to spend a day or two putting in some oh-so-clever registration/activation scheme, that's fine, as long as you realize your scheme is guaranteed to be laughably simple to crack. If it encourages or forces honest people to pay, then it's probably worth it, but any effort you expend beyond a day or two is a complete waste. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
