51–60 of 62 posts
Then I'd wait for the support emails to come in with people complaining about that crash/error...
Typical how the pirate support requests were always the most rude and impolite :-)
In my younger days of making sharewares, my way to find pirates was a lot easier... If the serial had been stolen, I would crash the app after a few hours of use, randomly, with a generic message but a very, very specific error code. Then I'd wait for the support emails to come in with people complaining about that crash/error... Typical how the pirate support requests were always the most rude and impolite :-)
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So basically "you broke the law, so we'll break the law"?
Unfortunately, this sort of attitude is not unheard of among proprietary software vendors - see for example FTDI bricking your hardware if they think it's counterfeit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493849
It's not quite the same thing. Their driver does things that work with the original hardware.
If a different chip uses the same USB ID, they're asking for trouble.
(of course good faith is unlikely in this case)
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The silliest part of this is pirates usually get to enjoy a better product because of their actions.
For example, the unskippable piracy warnings on DVDs.
I never understood the point of DRM. "10 extremely determined people want to steal my intellectual property! I'll go miles out of my way to design this in such a way that 1,000 people have a crappy experience to slow down the 10 people who want to be pirates!" Vendor makes a shitty product Pirates find a workaround, pirate shitty product anyway Vendor makes shitty product even shittier for all 1,000 people to agin tr…
I'm not a big fan of DRM and don't want to defend it, but your description is a bit incomplete. Those 10 determined people/pirates go off and put the cracked software (or the serials) up for download for the "not so determined" pirates who just want to download a cracked version (or serial) that works. Those don't have the skills (and willpower) to do the work needed to crack software. Those, however, aren't 10 peopl…
I thought I’d share this here to spread more attention to the practices of FlightSimLabs, a flight simulator software shop. The short version is that they included an executable in their installer that when run would extract passwords saved in Chrome and presumably phone them home. Their reasoning was that this was purely for DRM reasons. They claim that this password stealing tool would not run for legit/valid seria…
So basically "you broke the law, so we'll break the law"?
I never understood the point of DRM. "10 extremely determined people want to steal my intellectual property! I'll go miles out of my way to design this in such a way that 1,000 people have a crappy experience to slow down the 10 people who want to be pirates!" Vendor makes a shitty product Pirates find a workaround, pirate shitty product anyway Vendor makes shitty product even shittier for all 1,000 people to agin tr…
I think there are a few main kinds of reasoning behind DRM (non-exclusive, more then one could be involved in any specific case). One is psychological, one is pure greed and generally not explicitly acknowledged, but the last is potentially reasonable in specific situations. The first essentially boils down to the well studied psychological phenomena of Loss Aversion, which is what you refer to and purely emotional,…
The problem is that the recent examples of games not being cracked on release (like the latest Tomb Raider) does not fit with your reasoning, since they did not have sales number above the norm.
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Yeah, not sure if you're being sarcastic, but if not: the law doesn't work like that. You can't annul a criminal statute simply by including a clause in your EULA.
If someone signs a contract allowing you to do something you're generally allowed to do the thing, with exceptions. Dropbox uploads data from your computer on to their servers, which would be illegal had you not agreed to that as part of signing up and installing the software.
It's unquestionably illegal to do it on the down-low, like FlightSim has done. It's malware, nothing less, nothing more.
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If someone signs a contract allowing you to do something you're generally allowed to do the thing, with exceptions. Dropbox uploads data from your computer on to their servers, which would be illegal had you not agreed to that as part of signing up and installing the software.
So you're suggesting that the FlightSim EULA laid out exactly what the installer was doing, and asked permission to exfiltrate your passwords if the registration key didn't match? I very much doubt that, and I'm skeptical it would be legal even if so. It's unquestionably illegal to do it on the down-low, like FlightSim has done. It's malware, nothing less, nothing more.
No, I'm suggesting they should add a clause saying that they have the right to access and upload anything on your computer if it's being pirated.
I never said anything about the current EULA and haven't looked at it.
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I'm not a big fan of DRM and don't want to defend it, but your description is a bit incomplete. Those 10 determined people/pirates go off and put the cracked software (or the serials) up for download for the "not so determined" pirates who just want to download a cracked version (or serial) that works. Those don't have the skills (and willpower) to do the work needed to crack software. Those, however, aren't 10 peopl…
I’ve pirated apps before buying to make sure I’d like them and they work. It’s surprising how many apps don’t have trials or trials that are not so limited you don’t get an idea how it works. This is really true for Mac AppStore apps.
It's an interesting rationalization for an illegal activity, but you are not forced to go down the path of illegality by pirating a software you want to try. You can ask the author for a trial version, and if that leads nowhere, you can just skip this software. Not happy with the terms of the deal? Don't take the deal! The author would be wise to have a trial option, but doesn't owe it to anyone.
Personal anecdote time: when I was much younger I wanted to buy an exotic car and the dealer didn't offer test drives (understandably). I'm not sure it would feel acceptable to anyone if I had snuck into the dealership at night and took the car out for a spin around the block and put it back after an hour just to "test it out". I realize many flaws can be pointed out in my analogy easily, but the point is that one can get away with "illegal software test drive" because it's software and one would never think of doing it with hardware, because the risks of getting caught (and their consequences) are too high when we deal with tangible assets vs sitting home downloading cracks or serialz.