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Unique Solution to Pirates

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f0dder:
Instead, we got emails from grown adults using their corporate email addresses, replete with management job titles. These people actually pirated a $20 piece of software, and then had, again, the gall to email the uBar team for support. Example, with identifying information mercifully redacted:-wraith808 (October 23, 2015, 01:45 PM)
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Emphasis is mine...

Stoic Joker:
Just thinking about my own software (link in sig below), my initial thoughts are to play back phrases and sound effects to make the user think that their computer is possessed by some kind of evil entity or demon.


* Hail Satan
* Kill your mother
* Kill kill kill kill
* It's on backwards, backwards, backwards, <echoing>
* <door creaking>
* <screaming in pain>
* <stuttering> I s-s-s-sold h-h-him
* Damnation comes
* Darkness grows
* Shave your head off
* I'm behind you
Oh god... the horrible, terrible things that you could do. Watch a few Rob Zombie movies and let your imagination go nuts!-Renegade (October 24, 2015, 12:40 AM)
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Okay... Ren, skipping past the fact that you obviously need fucking counseling... :D ...We should talk some time about a project that I've always wanted to try doing that combines the classic old Esheep prank with a network worm so the prank can be allowed to jump from machine to machine on the target network.

We could even team up and make a NANY out of it.

mouser:
I just wanted to point out that i think its a terrible idea for software to do bad things to a user's computer or files if it suspects that it has been pirated.
Now in this case, it seems the author is just making his software malfunction, in ways that wouldn't cause loss of work, so i don't have a problem with it.

wraith808:
I just wanted to point out that i think its a terrible idea for software to do bad things to a user's computer or files if it suspects that it has been pirated.
Now in this case, it seems the author is just making his software malfunction, in ways that wouldn't cause loss of work, so i don't have a problem with it.
-mouser (October 24, 2015, 02:03 PM)
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Not bad things.  But even what Renegade is proposing isn't *bad* things.  It's not doing anything that is directed at anything other than the software itself.  Even popping up the dialog - he's not saying do anything.  But it will put a scare into them.

MilesAhead:
I have mixed feelings.  I can understand the frustration of the developer.  The only software I ever tried to sell I saw cracks of it on the web as soon as two people had a cooy with the product key(if you classify a crack as someone just publishing the key or including it with the download. It was kind of an experiment.  Not a thorough attempt at copy protection.)  But wouldn't it be awful if the developer got a reputation as a lousy programmer if people thought these were genuine bugs?

OTOH when software has been completely abandoned for years and there is no way to buy a legitimate key, is it a public service to patch it and upload?  At least in US copyright law I think there is some stipulation that the copyright holder must take some measure to protect the copyright.  Not responding to many inquiries over time and not protesting the patch could well be considered abandoning the rights.

Shades of gray and line drawing is rarely easy I guess.  :)

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