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Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

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Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#181

Post by maxk42 »

sph wrote: post #34
shon wrote: post #28

These aren’t your customers. The user who is willing to stomach the time and risks associated with cracked software is NOT your target market anyway. This is essentially a free trial program for “aspirational users” who will circulate it for you. I’ve had my software (games) pirated, and been a pirate in my youth. Now I wouldn’t consider pirating because I have more money than time now. I suspect your actual addressa…

> The user who is willing to stomach the time and risks associated with cracked software is NOT your target market anyway. I vehemently disagree. Cracked users of commercial software ARE your target market that, for any reason, can't afford to pay you. They would if they could. When I was a broke teenager, I pirated a lot of software, games and music I later paid for when I had enough money to do so. Piracy can be an…

> Cracked users of commercial software ARE your target market that, for any reason, can't afford to pay you.

I've gotta disagree here. SOME pirates are your target market that can't afford to pay you. I can't tell you how many times a friend has bragged to me about pirating a movie over drinks at an overpriced bar. If you can afford four cocktails at $15 a pop then you certainly can afford the $20 or less it costs to license a movie. Some people just like to feel like they're getting away with something.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#182

Post by banana_giraffe »

no_time wrote: post #126
heavyset_go wrote: post #125

Find out the host, send them a DMCA takedown requests. If it's on BitTorrent, you can get crazy about it and monitor people who share it and send them letters/notify their ISP, but I think that's a lost cause. Similarly with other P2P networks, you often make direct connections with sharers, and you can use IP addresses to report them to ISPs. That or you can do what studios/rights holders so with movies and poison t…

>That or you can do what studios/rights holders so with movies and poison the well with broken downloads, bogus files, etc. Can you provide some proof of this happening? I'm curious because I've always thought about this but never actually encountered it in the wild.

I've not seen studios do this (which doesn't prove they don't, of course)

It is, however, _very_ common for different groups to use unreleased or recently release movies to release a video that's just a sign post. Either the URL shown in the video leads to a malware site, or a site that charges you to see the full video, itself a scam of some degree.

For instance, you'll see this:

    "name": "A Man Called Otto.2023.720p.BluRay.x264-WDC", 
    "files": [
      {"name": "A Man Called Otto.2023.720p.BluRay.x264-WDC/A Man Called Otto.2023.720p.BluRay.x264-WDC.avi", "size": 670547315}, 
      {"name": "A Man Called Otto.2023.720p.BluRay.x264-WDC/Readme.txt", "size": 223}
The AVI is unplayable with some generic message, and the readme has something like "to watch the movie, use this link to create an account", and the resulting website will eventually ask for your credit card for "verification purposes"

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#183

Post by kabdib »

andymccurdy wrote: post #119
kabdib wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was working on video game cartridges, I discovered that one of my neighbors in my apartment building was a prolific pirate. I introduced myself and we had some fun chats. The Atari 800 cartridge address range could be populated with RAM, and cartridge images simply copied to RAM and run. Copy protection techniques usually involved figuring out sneaky ways to write to that address range (which would crash an im…

The Atari 800 was my first console and where I typed my first lines of Basic code. While it wasn't obvious as a 7 or 8 year old kid, I reflect back on this experience fondly and recognize that it was instrumental in my development as a self-taught software engineer. Thank you for your role in my personal development.

The Atari 800 was released (IIRC) in 1979. It was a surprisingly good platform, with a decent OS, a tolerable file system (for a slow floppy disk), and great documentation all around. I learned a lot reading the Atari docs, long before I worked there.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#184

Post by jeffybefffy519 »

paxys wrote: post #115

Here's the standard playbook for dealing with this: - Let hobbyists and tiny companies pirate your software. You don't have to encourage it, but you can still turn a blind eye. They weren't going to pay you anyways, and this is a good way to get people familiar with your products. - Ruthlessly go after mid-large sized companies if you find their employees pirating your software. They have money to pay, and will be ha…

This is a fascinating take that I have never considered. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#185

Post by lll-o-lll »

Ignore all the “piracy is actually wonderful” posts. Depending on your industry and product, you can lose a great deal of revenue from piracy.

Circumventing licensing restrictions, “sharing” keys, customers pretending to be other customers to avoid paying support agreements, I’ve seen it all. Some people view avoiding paying you as a legitimate way to do business, and will happily do so if they can get away with it.

One mechanism to prevent this that actually works, is having a chunk of your functionality “cloud based”. Put new functionality server side and piracy loses its value. Make it so that the upgrade mechanism is through their account. Generally, stop thinking in terms of “registration” and start thinking in terms of “licence to access services”.

Most other mechanisms are legal rather than technical, but these are hardest to pursue in the countries where piracy revenue loss will be most prevalent.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#186

Post by cobertos »

paxys wrote: post #115

Here's the standard playbook for dealing with this: - Let hobbyists and tiny companies pirate your software. You don't have to encourage it, but you can still turn a blind eye. They weren't going to pay you anyways, and this is a good way to get people familiar with your products. - Ruthlessly go after mid-large sized companies if you find their employees pirating your software. They have money to pay, and will be ha…

How do you correlate the installation with the company if it's pirated, for going after mid/large sized companies? Phone home and reverse IP lookup?

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#187

Post by krisoft »

kuboble wrote: post #178
krisoft wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever people report that bug I feel a little joy I hope you are super duper 100% sure the bug can’t happen otherwise. I would hate to be your paying costumer and ignored because your drm system is buggy.

Yes. 100% super duper sure. It's something along the lines of: Pi+=2 in one place of the code. And Pi += 1.1415 somewhere else. And both are guaranteed to run at the start of the program so that Pi=3.1415 However one of those lines is hidden in a part of the code that the most obvious crack is going to remove.

Okay. That sounds reasonable. Well thought out system.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#188

Post by addaon »

folli wrote: post #160
addaon wrote: post #64

One trick I’ve learned from the mobile game world is to make sure your localization files are separate resources — don’t compile them in. They way, when your game is first cracked, you’ll get a pretty decent Russian translation immediately that you can, with no moral concerns, “steal” back for your next update — and within only a few weeks you’ll have a pretty rich set of languages floating around for your distributi…

That's actually really smart, I would have never thought of this. Why CJK text first?

Most scripts will mostly work if you support localization, but have only tested English. You'll most likely find issues with scripts needing compulsory ligatures (Devanagari) and CJK; so test them to make sure that someone trying to hack in an alternate localization doesn't run into a missing font, bad line breaking, unreadable text size, etc.

[Edit: "first" meaning "before releasing", not meaning "before other scripts."]

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#189

Post by fest »

KomoD wrote: post #90
908B64B197 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a third option: If the software supports getting updates, get the cracked copies to phone home and have a legal firm send them a warning they might be using hacked software. Home users won't care, but legitimate businesses might convert to actual sales.

How would you send them a warning, you'd know nothing other than an IP address? If you just send the ISP a regular ol' "copyright" notice, there's a lot of ISPs who do not forward those notices. And if you made cracked copies phone home, that's something that would get removed by the cracker anyway most of the time.

In my country, there is a branch of police that deals with such things. They have a relationship with an organization called Business Software Alliance, which I believe is formed with this specific goal- to allow foreign companies or their local distributors reach pirate users. However, I'm only aware of the major software companies being members of this org: Microsoft, Adobe, Dassault (Solidworks), Siemens.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#190

Post by FlyingSnake »

DarrenDev wrote: post #168
PreInternet01 wrote: post #29

Congratulations! Having cracked versions out there indicates that your software is both useful and notable, which is a point where many developers would love to arrive at, maybe, one day. As to what to do about it, there are two basic tracks, neither of which is incompatible with the other: 1. The legal route: notifying distribution sites that they're hosting content in violation of copyright law, requesting takedown…

There is a third option which I'm surprised no one has mentioned so far: Ignore them. First, people or companies using the cracked version of your software were never going to buy it. These people do not pay for software, and nothing you do will convince them to pay for it. Secondly, whatever measures you put in place to combat the cracked versions will potentially have a negative impact on your actual paying users -…

I agree. Ignoring them is probably a good strategy. #2 in the list is too time consuming and has opportunity cost for the small team already wearing many hats.
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