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I wonder if the customer will now share the coupon code.
It hit me hard, made me realize that it isn't a victimless crime and that I was literally depriving this guy of what he deserves, payment for his hard work. Definitely one of the leading factors that caused me to stop piracy altogether. Even pirates have a heart, and by humanizing the product, it is way harder to steal it and feel okay about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There more info here: http://www.keacher.com/1060/how-i-got-to-my-first-sale/ The first result for "blurity serial number" points to https://www.trademarkia.com/blurity-77870929.html Edit: Entering the serial number does indeed produce the easter egg dialog, with a coupon code that still works. BTW, there is a typo on the buy page 'regsitration'.
We have a winner! After I discovered people were doing that, I was rather surprised that they thought that the trademark serial number would be a valid registration key. I guess people don't read. Edit: Thanks for the heads-up about the typo. Oops!
Somewhat related, when I was younger I had no money and didn't have much of a problem pirating software (times have changed and I realize how stupid that is). I tried to pirate a piece of software and upon entering a fake key got a popup similar to yours. Basically, it said "I'm not able to stop you from pirating this software, I'm not even going to disable activation for your clearly invalid key. Just remember that…
Notch, of Minecraft fame, is well known for these types of shenanigans, even shaming a Minecraft pirate in a Quake 3 match ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120412/07474418467/friend... ) Not sure it's scalable, but sure makes for a fun alternative to perpetual legal battles
Some indie game producers release on piratebay right from day zero. Usually with some kind of easter egg version, e.g. all in-game characters have a pirate hat, no other hats are available like in a legitimate version. This makes sure that no-one pirates a badly cracked buggy version and gets a bad experience and decides not to buy the game. Thankfully free demos are coming back so it is easier to test a game legally…
Somewhat related, when I was younger I had no money and didn't have much of a problem pirating software (times have changed and I realize how stupid that is). I tried to pirate a piece of software and upon entering a fake key got a popup similar to yours. Basically, it said "I'm not able to stop you from pirating this software, I'm not even going to disable activation for your clearly invalid key. Just remember that…
The logic also demand that there is a zero sum game going where every copy equals a lost sale. Copying is as about as simple as needing. If needing results in lost sales, then each time I am hungry, I create lost sales for restaurants if I dont buy something immediately. That might also sound fine logically, as if I am hungry I will buy food, and if I didnt need to buy said food, I am depriving someone of payments for their hard work to create food I could have eaten. It is also crazy! the world is not a zero sum world. It is way more complicated and social economics (how should creative people get payed for their work) should be decided by economics and politics, not law.
Notch, of Minecraft fame, is well known for these types of shenanigans, even shaming a Minecraft pirate in a Quake 3 match ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120412/07474418467/friend... ) Not sure it's scalable, but sure makes for a fun alternative to perpetual legal battles
Some indie game producers release on piratebay right from day zero. Usually with some kind of easter egg version, e.g. all in-game characters have a pirate hat, no other hats are available like in a legitimate version. This makes sure that no-one pirates a badly cracked buggy version and gets a bad experience and decides not to buy the game. Thankfully free demos are coming back so it is easier to test a game legally…
Isn't this incentivising people to pirate before buying a legitimate license?
My guess is that the time this guy spent on this info box and coupon code far exceed the money from one license.
A lot of the funnier strings convinced me to give money to the authors of software I'd never have purchased or used to start with (I used to download a lot of shareware just to explore its copy protection).
Famously, Mac OS X also contains the "Don't Steal Mac OS X" poem mapped into virtual address space by DSMOS.kext.
The people cracking/pirating software are just as human as the authors - any kind of communication at a personal level increases the chance of a sale IMO.
I wonder if the customer will now share the coupon code.