Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

I've seen it with Desktop tower defense. Can't tell I appreciate it, but it should help fighting theft.

Though, is it really that hard to crack? (wrt to code obfuscation) Any experience from flash developers?

This ridicules the whole concept of software patents. Where they should protect innovation they simply protect the lack thereof. If it was the other way around, if they had such a great product that the competition had too much work to do, they wouldn't need a patent in the first place. This is how the rest of the world deals with the problem.

Now we know that having the best product is not a guarantee for success. And that's where that unethical edge-taking via patents comes into play.

The problem is that you're assuming that everyone is playing a level headed game with you. I was born and raised in India. Even though I grew up elsewhere inside my head, I've seen stuff that is so far out that I really couldn't believe my eyes.

I've seen my father pile money into a black bag for his boss in order to bribe a certain famous politician. Why? Well, they wanted to win the bid for supplying security gear to a certain infrastructural branch. I snorted in disbelief and I was promptly rushed out of the room.

I've seen people copy and paste code for a living in a company. I've seen family businesses that are hardly above being a gray mafia. I've seen people burn their books every year to evade tax, and I've seen tax officials get richer and richer all the time.

Do you want me to continue?

It is true that such stuff happens every where, but over here it is taken as the birth right of a company to do so. As long as they have money in their pockets no one can touch them. This is where scare tactics come in.

Whether or not his company is innovative is a question that comes into play only when other people are competing in the same way. Trust me he has done something extremely bold down here, but the trolls have more money and less expenses. They don't need to hire people to develop stuff. They just copy whatever he makes and bribe the officials so that they can get away.

If a patent deters them even one bit and allows him to thrive then I think it is logical for him to do so. Right or wrong comes into the equation when certain basic parameters are met.

Personally, I can't live like this and the minute I get an opportunity I will pack my bags and leave. I want to spend my time creating beautiful things not fighting trolls in the name of running a "business". So, in a way I applaud him for standing his ground and fighting to make it down here. At the same time I condemn him, but can I really blame him?

Calls to the standard library and globals (like mouseX), etc. will remain as is. So my guess is that it would be not too hard to alter. But I'd be surprised if such simple measures wouldn't cut off the majority of leechers. Though as soon as one cracked version shows up on the internet, the whole maneuver is rendered futile.

This is indeed an interesting topic, especially considering the options a) run everywhere and show my ads (mochiads, cpmstar, ...?) or b) run only at my site so I get all the traffic (not sure if this is compatible with those ad-servers).

Well... this reminds me of the drm-struggle. Although the negative impact for the enduser is a lot smaller (dysfunctional swf on a leecher site?), you'd have to ask yourself how much time you'd like to spend with the arms race rather than implementing features, fixing bugs or writing new games. As a "content provider" there is probably no other way to keep sanity other than accepting theft to some degree.

:(