From: kolstad@cae.wisc.edu (Joel Kolstad) Subject: Re: How to the disks copy protected. Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering Lines: 38 In article sehari@iastate.edu (Babak Sehari) writes: > >I have written a program and I want to market it. I would like certain degree >of protection, since my main custmers are individuals and not the >cooperations. I know laser hole burning method, and hardware key method, >however, my software is going to cost only $15.00, so I can not afford that. >Also, at this low price I can not afford people make too many copy of my >software. Well, I guess say upto %20 illigal copying is ok by me. > >However, I do not want someone to get a copy of PCTools and copy my software. >Off course, I never meant to forbid the true hackers from copying, since they >can develope a better program anyway. I wouldn't bother with the copy protection, if I were you. If you program is any good, the pirates will have stripped the protection and will be distributing the stripped version is well under a week. Hardware methods prevent J. Random Loser from using his Copy II PC to pirate your software, but doesn't stop anyone who knows a few people with enough connections to "real" pirates who _will_ be able to defeat your "check for the hole" code. You may want to price your software (depending on what it is) a tad higher... a price change from $15 to $25 probably would turn off very few potentials buyers, and that way you could tolerate more pirates (whose numbers don't change with the price). As for the 20% pirating figure... ha, ha. Of course, a lot of pirates just have this "thing" about having pirated software, even if they never use it, so perhaps that really wouldn't count towards 20%. Even so, 20% is awfully low. ---Joel Kolstad P.S. -- I assume you're talking PC software. If you're talking UNIX, HP-48, or something else somewhat obscure, copy protection might be a slightly more viable alternative.