Re: DDJ Article on "Secure" Dongle

"TC" <aatcbbtccctc@yahoo.com> writes:
> Piracy is a legitimate concern for software authors.
>
> My experience, with my own product, is that 1% of effort will deter 99%
> of people who would otherwise pirate my app. But we all know that no
> amount of extra effort will deter the remaining 1%.
>
> So, dongles etc. al. are just a waste of time and money. The people who
> are deterred by those, would be equally deterred by an encrypted value
> in the registry, or somesuch simple scheme.

it may be the reverse of swimming pools and fences ... if you have a
fence ... it isn't your fault ... if you don't have a fence then it is
your fault. demonstratable counter measures ... are enuf to take
action ... either by employers to fire employees that violate. if you
are charging ... and some large corporation is in flagrant violation
action can be taken. one percent not paying/stealing can be tolerated
... i think a lot of companies figure that they are going to have 5-7
precent loss ... places like retail stores ... employees mostly ...
but also straight-forward customers shoplifting. sometimes the counter
measures are both simple deterrent for most, as well as basis for
various kinds of legal action.

there was a trade-secret theft situation ... where legal action was
brought claiming several billion damages ... the judge invoked the
swimming pool scenario; if it really is billions of dollars ... some
large fraction of the population will be expected to steal, as a
matter of course, and you can't really hold it against them ... unless
you show that you have taken countermeasures proportional to the value
of what is being protected. if isn't absolute ... and the
countermeasures wouldn't be expected to cost more than value of what
is being protected ... just demonstratable proportional.

that was possibly one of the places i picked up security proportional
to risk ... some slight topic drift
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61 Security Proportional To Risk

in any case, given swimming pool scenario and judges wanting to see
countermeasures proportional to value ... then the issue may be the
value of the software and how much are you charging for each license.

and then there is some additional topic drift ... straying back to
unbundling announcement on 6/23/69 and starting to charge for
application software ... although kernel software was still free.
however, when i was doing the resource manager ... it got selected to
be the guinea pig for first charged for kernel software ... and i got
to spend lots of time with business and legal people on software
pricing policies. some past collected posts on unbundling and software
pricing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#unbundle

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/