When the barebones, cheap and restricted license of a program is $10k, and each module (and you usually need a few of 'em) is $3k and upwards... and that's the inexpensive option, then we'll talk.

:p

A long time ago I worked in the systems department of a company that had a niche software title installed on one machine. This software was hardware-enabled (it used a dongle) ... without it, it didn't work. An update to it was released and we installed it. Whereupon the software refused to work, saying the dongle wasn't present.

After a couple of calls to the developer, it turned out that the update somehow interfered with some of the dongles they'd issued over the years and prevented the software from recognizing them. It took awhile to back off the update and get the program working. Eventually the tech I talked to admitted that the update had included logic intended to circumvent cracks, and he further admitted that some other legitimate customers had been caught, too. Maybe a month later, they released another "update" which worked correctly ... apparently they found what went wrong with the first, and fixed it.

So it may be great for them that they targeted software pirates ... but their salvo inadvertently "broke" some legitimate customers' installations. It's one thing to make trouble for folks with pirated software; it's quite another to create problems for legitimate customers who paid a couple thousand dollars for their software.

@misslisa: Yea, I was there when it died the first time and they fixed it, but when the hardware failed, that was it, even the guys in manila couldn't activate the software

@Erich Krueger:

Because, of course, copy protection schemes are rarely broken.

Especially disk burn-holes, dead sectors, uncopyable sectors, malformed sectors, Everlok, Neverlok, Superlok, Macrovision, SafeDisc 1,2,3,4, SecuROM 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, StarForce, TAGES, GD-ROM, PSX/PS2 protection and region-locking, Blu-Ray, XBox/360 RSA, XBox Live Firmware detection, ARccOS, ProtectDISC/BURN, RipGuard, Cactus, K2A, MediaGuard, CD-Cops, LaserLok...

I can continue - I've barely broken the surface of the list of cracked protection schemes - but I think that's plenty.

If you put money into a copy protection scheme, you're just flushing it straight down the toilet. Perhaps you'd do better to invest in marketing, or better coding - people will be far more likely to purchase your software if they feel that they're getting value for their money.

@johnfrombrooklyn:

You *ASSUME* it did nothing to registered owners.

Even well-coded software has bugs. Are you confident enough in your code to *know* that there were *absolutely no possible issues that would EVER* cause your software to do damage to legitimate users?

Are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that none of the legitimate users were using cracks for whatever reason?

More importantly, your actions are just as, if not more, illegal as those of the pirates. You could be violating any number of national or international laws by writing intentionally malicious code.

@HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.:

I'm only being slightly facetious.

It actually *is* considered an act of terrorism, under PATRIOT, to pirate software... though I believe that the intent was leveled at "commercial" software pirates.

@korybing: I'm with korybing. You know what I think is happening? I think software companies (in most cases) are being sold a product and are buying into the idea that they have to use this product to protect their software. The sad thing is; the industry is paying millions to develop or include already developed DRM and it -isn't- working...software is still being used for free. All this DRM is to the extreme frustration of people who are the -customers-. How has the customer become this devalued?

If Adobe has a "huge" problem with pirated software; I agree that they need to look at themselves. It happens with computer games too, the problem there is they expect you to pay $59 for a game that is total garbage. Adobe doesn't have the crap software problem (that I know of), they just have a great imaging product that tons of people want. Their problem takes me 30 seconds to find, I was on their site the other day because I wanted to touch up some old photos I just scanned. They were wanting $699-$1,000+. I understand the work that goes into software as a developer...but $1,000?! Maybe your software is good, maybe it's the best, but you start selling your good software for $1,000 when everyone wants it in their home and you are going to end up on the freaking torrent sites and become very popular there. I believe in buying software I use, but I know tens of people who have pirated copies of Photoshop. I imagine they aren't willing to pay $1,000 for something that is marginally better than other software at around the $59.99 price point. Anyway, I still don't own or use Photoshop because of their stupid pricing.

For fun, I also looked up Acrobat 9 Pro: $449.00. Yeah, nevermind I can get an OEM copy of MS Office Pro (with a piece of hardware I need anyway) for $389.00...can Acrobat really equal the functionality of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and Access?!

It just seems like the whole process is flawed and could be fixed somehow.

@korybing:

Do you understand? Do you understand completely? Because, quite frankly, either Adobe cracks down on pirates or they go out of business.

"Now youze woiuldn't wants dem bizness programs you bought to suddenly stops woiking at an inconvenient time, now would youze? We here at Adobe we'ze gots a 'support fee' youze can poichase dat will keep ev'ryting woiking. By da' way - youze need any olive oylz?"

That is my main beef with all of these "pirate protection" sorts of deals. I understand that Adobe is pirated like CRAZY and they're trying hard to keep that from happening, but these sorts of policies (like DRM'd music and others) only hurt honest people who want to do things nice and legally. People who don't care about the legality will just torrent and crack it to get around the inability to reactivate their old programs. But this person is trying to keep it legit and is getting a big fat "Sorry you're SOL". I understand if it's something to do with Adobe buying out Macromedia, but there's gotta be something they can do that makes it possible to still use the older programs (that aren't actually all that old and are still completely usable).

@Richard Ferrell: thanks for that tidbit - I wondered what the hell happened to my RoboHelp x5.

Err... or so I heard.

@RvLeshrac:

As long as you use a "test" machine to test your cracks/warez first you are good. Even if it does get infected I have it on it's own switch and even on it's own workgroup. All the rest of the machines are off when it happens.

If I get a baddie I just simply turn off the machine, next time it boots it will be with a boot cdrom. I wipe the drive with the last good image, and it's back to normal and no baddies exist. I even use DBAN just to make sure it don't survive.

I call the machine "R2-D2"

Sometimes I even rename it to say "R4" or whatever a droid machine I can give it for a name.

The geniuses behind this activation/deactivation scheme just applied that same thinking to this situation. It's probably impossible to them that a hard drive could ever corrupt or otherwise get fubar'd.

I used to work for a software company that released an "important update" that seriously screwed up computers that were running cracked versions of our software. If you had a registered version it did nothing. If it was a cracked copy it would screw up your registry. Hee Hee. I loved to listen to the phone that day when angry people called to blame us. But of course it wasn't our fault since our software wasn't even on their computer. @RvLeshrac:

@scootinger: It wasn't adobe that went above and beyond, it was an individual employee who wasn't lazy, unthinking or uncaring. That the customer had to wade through several adobe employees first proves the point.

I've had a similar experience, forced to talk to several before finding someone who knows what he/she is doing. Whenever I encounter a competent person in an incompetent company, I always ask, "You haven't worked their for more than a year, have you?" Almost always, they say they haven't.

@RvLeshrac:

I work for a software company. We needed to institute draconian activation processes because single copies of our software were making the rounds to hundreds of users at colleges and companies.

I know that if you have older copies of RoboHelp they won't activate as the activcation server died, and no one leared what to do, That old server was a ehelp, then macromedia then adobe... you were just out of luck at that point

Last year I bought Microsoft Office 2007 when Microsoft did that "Ultimate Steal" package, which was MS Office for $59, or whatever, which I think is really reasonable and I wanted to support MS for offering competitive pricing, so I bought the suite. Fast forward about 4 month and my computer dies. Fast forward about 6 months and I finally buy a new computer and I put Windows 7 on it. Of course, because I bought the Ultimate Steal, there was no disc, it was download only (another thing I was happy that Microsoft offered), but of course, knowing me, I had forgotten/lost the disc that had Office2007 on it. At first I went to MS' website and downloaded the Office demo, which I knew you could upgrade, but what'dya'know, you can't use an Ultimate product key on a non-ultimate package (kind of stupid if you ask me, but whatever).

I tried everything that I could, but MS had a limit of a 1-month window after purchase of downloading, and I couldn't find any way to get the program again. The thing is, I was legally licensed to have the software and, fortunately or unfortunately, decided that I Was justified in downloading the software from newsgroups instead of from Microsoft's website. I'm not sure of the legality of it, but I got a copy of Office, sure, it came with it's own crack and all sorts of illegality, but I used my legally purchased key, and -tada- it worked perfectly.

@Kogenta:

There are lots of hidden activation triggers and "bypass" (for lack of a better word) systems.

It makes explaining why you have to reactivate... tricky.

Suffice to say, if you activate today, and then change most of your hardware tomorrow, it will still activate. Next week? Not so much.

@Cant_stop_the_rock:

They completely shut down all of their activation servers for the holiday?

@RvLeshrac: Actually I believe that for XP, how it works is when you activate it the first time, it makes a hardware profile. You can then change any 6 pieces of hardware before you have to re-authenticate. This limit is reset every 6 months when XP makes a "new" profile of your system.

@dave_coder:

Actually, even though he paid for it, it is still illegal. Under USAPATRIOT, it could be prosecuted as "terrorism," for some new definition of the word.

Simply cracking the software that he purchased could open him up to claims of damages in the tens of thousands of dollars.

@Ronin-Democrat:

All activation, copy-protection, and other DRM is bad. Plain and simple.

^--- Fixed that for ya'

@Megalomania:

Or *real* Adobe software, AutoCAD, MAS, Peachtree Accounting, Intuit business packages, Oracle, HP/UX, AIX, or Solaris.......

MS server packages run in the thousands of dollars for small to mid-size businesses, several of the above run into the *dozens* of thousands.

For Enterprise systems, you're looking at a $25k per-processor license for MSSQL, and that's the most expensive piece of kit from MS. You're looking at that much simply for a required service agreement from HP, IBM, or Sun, let alone the costs of the hardware and software.

@Quarkie:

Because paying for it obviously gets you a better experience, when your software suddenly stops working one day.

I'm all for paying for the software, seriously, but companies make it so incredibly difficult to use the software you've paid for - it is frequently easier to buy the software and then grab a cracked version to actually *use*.

@skizsrodt:

The activation limit for XP is somewhat roundabout. For the same hardware signature (the same hardware), you can activate an unlimited number of times within a certain period of time (a week, two, something like that). After that, you have to wait ~6 months between activations or go through the phone activation process.

If your hardware signature changes, you will nearly always have to call to activate.

In the case of OEM software, it clearly states in the OEM license that an OEM install is ONLY good for the ORIGINAL system on which it was installed.

That, of course, is complete BS, and typically can be taken care of with activation-by-phone.

Post-XP, MS has become substantially better about the licenses (no more non-transferrable OEM licenses), but reactivation still follows the same general rules.

@Coles_Law:

What yasth said. The larger sites, which it would probably be bad to mention here, are very big on 'clean' downloads. They likely do a far better job than any end-user would at scanning their files.

The bigger issue is with the ad banners on the sites, but a decent antivirus app (NOD32, KAV, AntiVir), antispyware app (SUPERAntiSpyware, MWBAM), and you're good to go.

This also doesn't take into account the legal issues with using pirated software for an activity that you are profiting from.

Xenn, some of your friends are apparently really dumb.

Another reason why I dipped my hand into the pirate's treasure chest: unusable legitimately owned software. I bought Bioshock, it wouldn't work for some unknown reason. So I went and procured another version that would work.

MS is one of the few companies to do auth mostly right (phone call in center, ability to self host license servers)

I've been having a problem with Adobe for over 2 months not crediting a $200 overcharge for an online upgrade. It was approved right away back in May, but after many calls, I'm still waiting...

$400 is a bit pricey for a piece of software, I will admit.

Are these real names?

@RvLeshrac: And hundreds of sites with a virus-laden crack. It's Russian Roulette with the download.

@winshape: Her problem seemed to be at least in part due to her old computer crashing and her being unable to "de-activate" it there.

Intuit's old software rewrote the boot sector on activation, causing damage to non-windows operating systems. I expect you could include "Windows XP" in your non-windows operating systems list if you are running a version that expected windows 98.

If it didn't manage to break your PC, it probably refused to activate (and overwrite your bootsector) to protect it...

Wait until MS turns off Windows XP activation. Unless they offer a patch to turn off the activation, all the (idiots) who decided to use it in various embedded systems will have fun. And, for "corporate" editions, wait until vista/windows 7 activation gets turned off.

Then we will finally get anti-DRM legislation.

I called the number, thinking it'd be as simple as I give a code and they use it to generate a new activation key. No. Instead, I was placed on hold for about 30 minutes while my "support agent" or whatever was trying to figure out what was going on.

The final word from Intuit : No, you can't activate your legally-purchased and legitimate software. We refuse to. If you want to continue using Quickbooks or to have access to the years of company data you have archived in our proprietary format, you'll need to buy our latest version. At full price.

I told them that this was horrible policy and most likely not legal. They said "Sorry, that's policy. Would you like to go ahead and buy the new software?" I was in shock over the greed/ineptitude. I gave them a few choice parting words, and then set to work. I found the activation key thing on the dead hard drive and had my client back up and going.

My client didn't want the new version. Their ancient software worked just fine for what they wanted to do. Intuit's behavior was just unexplainably horrible.

"But I wonder why Adobe doesn't do that with Studio MX, considering that they *probably* won't be selling it again? "

Because while they aren't selling Studio MX they are selling shiny new versions of Flash and Dreamweaver, and are probably hoping everyone will just upgrade.

This just goes to show that DRM schemes are nothing but bad news. Obviously, not every company will go "above and beyond" like Adobe did. Hell, the company that publishes your software/music/movie might just end up going out of business, then you'll be screwed.

An even bigger problem is with laws such as the DMCA, which gives penalties for trying to bypass copy protection. Aside from preventing fair-use uses of media (i.e. copying copy-protected DVDs), it could ultimately prevent you from using the software (license) that you paid for but cannot use. I find it to be a bigger crime that a company can screw its customers like this.

I may as well have been speaking Greek to the email support guy when I said I needed my activation count reset on their activation server. I hate it when tech support has no clue how things work (which is 90% of the time with big companies).

I had a similar problem with windows xp. I learned that they have a product activation limit, and had to call them to get a new key so that I could reactivate my OS. At least they took care of it, but a numbered limit on how many times i can activate? (I one time did a hard drive upgrade, then my system crashed. So I built a new computer, and the software crashed trying to install service pack 1, was a fun week.)

I for one am impressed. Just giving away a license for a brand-new product isn't what I expected Adobe to do, especially since they've all but gutted the erstwhile Macromedia product line.

I can't wait for about another 5-10 years to pass, when some large company actually turns off activation servers for a "legacy" product and gets hit with a class action lawsuit. I hope that would have happened to Microsoft had they actually turned off the servers for MSN Music in 2008.

If you can't activate your purchased software, there are dozens of websites out there that will be happy to provide you with a virus-free activation crack.

Kudos to Adobe for doing the right thing, plus. But the problem was relying on servers as ultimate gatekeepers of whether you can use something you've already purchased... I mean "licensed."