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Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#21

Post by JamesBaxter »

Many people I know have always pirated software and TV and said once there was a reasonable way to get it legally they would pay for it. I haven't seen this be the case. I don't think you can convert pirates.

It is possible however to convert legal users to pirates by having systems that annoy people who have legally purchased. I don't know how you strike the balance.

I hate the entitlement of people who pirate stuff, if it's not legally available in your area that's a shame but it doesn't give you a right to it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#22

Post by ttoinou »

tu6 wrote: post #7

Don't worry about users who crack or pirate software. This is not the target demographic you will have much luck with turning into paying customers. Fixate on your actually software. If kids in third world countries are your primary users its time to build something new. That's a signal you don't want to ignore.

My paying customers are professional in the industry I work on. Most of my pirates might very well be "amateurs" in the sense that they don't make money with theirs activity and I'm fine with it.

I just think it's too bad for me theses people go somewhere else to download my product and talk about it. There must be something I could do

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#23

Post by ttoinou »

anfractuosity wrote: post #11

Could you 'watermark' the program for each user (although that wouldn't be trivial), and mention noticeably that the software is watermarked. Not sure if that would really dissuade anyone leaking/cracking it though, but it may possibly help determine potentially where the leak/crack came from. There are probably many reasons why watermarking isn't worthwhile though, as you'd then need to have an 'online' system for g…

Good idea for an unlimited trial but it's for videos, so watermarking would be a performance sink.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#24

Post by ju-st »

A piece of software I sell is so complicated to set up/configure and missing any documentation so you have no chance to successfully use it without my guidance and support.

The configuration is a one-time thing, the daily use is simple, so this is no problem for usability. And the software is a niche application with very few potential and real customers.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#25

Post by ttoinou »

Kpourdeilami wrote: post #20

Can you track the country in which the users are pirating your software from? If say 90% of the people pirating your software are in countries that don't have access to credit cards, then it'll be impossible to convert them to paid users

Yes and also in cheaper country my product might be too expensive. I'm going to look where people are from in the underground forums and think about it, thanks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#26

Post by ilogik »

JamesBaxter wrote: post #21

Many people I know have always pirated software and TV and said once there was a reasonable way to get it legally they would pay for it. I haven't seen this be the case. I don't think you can convert pirates. It is possible however to convert legal users to pirates by having systems that annoy people who have legally purchased. I don't know how you strike the balance. I hate the entitlement of people who pirate stuff…

I used to be like that in high school, college. Everybody did it.

Now? I've been paying for Google play music and Netflix since they've been available in my country.

I pay for my IDE

I have a steam library so large that I'll never be able to play everything

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#27

Post by akerro »

>The thing is, theses users don't come to my product page for getting updates for example, so I think it's a loss for me because I can't reach them and talk to them.

You assume that they would buy in in the first place. I would not spend a penny on 95% stuff I pirated. Most of the stuff was a one time thing, like game was too boring (I would request a refund), game had too high requrements, so I couldn't even start an episode, music was not interesting after literally one song from whole discography etc.

> in the FAQ and try to not show it if I detect the software is not cracked ?

Things have FAQ? I've never seen them.

>What if I distribute the pirated version myself

I remember this coll guy https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2mjxde/develo...

>I have faith that some of my pirate users can become my clients one day

I've pirated more than 1k of PC games, my steam account has 97 tites right now, and there is also GOG.

Try to make your stuff easy to reach, steam, gog, https://itch.io/app, try to build hype around your game, it's easy now no reddit in /r/gaming show some cool/funny scene from the game, make announcement on /r/linux_gaming that game is available from first day, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#28

Post by ttoinou »

vortico wrote: post #10

My company deals with piracy in the following technical way, and it works well enough for potential buyers to stay buyers. I release software binaries often, say every two weeks, and the software self-updates with permission from the user. The main application software is free, while the plugins (the real meat of the software) are purchased individually. When the application updates, the plugins also update. I use th…

Why do your plugins need also to update ? There's a lot of changes in the API ?

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#29

Post by arca_vorago »

vortico wrote: post #10

My company deals with piracy in the following technical way, and it works well enough for potential buyers to stay buyers. I release software binaries often, say every two weeks, and the software self-updates with permission from the user. The main application software is free, while the plugins (the real meat of the software) are purchased individually. When the application updates, the plugins also update. I use th…

How do you know which user released the plugins?

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with piracy?

#30

Post by Cozumel »

ttoinou wrote: post #12
Cozumel wrote: post #2

Piracy is a huge issue, one way around it, although too late for you now, is to only sell an online hosted version of your software, they can't crack what they don't have access too. Have you got a forum to engage your customers with directly? Most times (and this is a huge generalisation) but these consumers aren't 'evil', they just either have no money or don't know any better. If you can engage with them and get t…

Thanks for the answer ! I like the lite idea, although too late for you now, is to only sell an online hosted version of your software, they can't crack what they don't have access too I've thought about it and it's an excellent solution because I could link the software to a website with a subscription based business model. And my software could be better with internet / community feature inside it ! But it's for mi…

An approach I took in your situation was to actually sign up to the forums, I became moderator there and then didn't allow anyone to share my stuff! The flip side though is you still have to allow people to share other peoples stuff so morally it's a grey area. Whatever you choose though, good luck!
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