Software Piracy & Software Protection

July 7, 2008 - PRLog -- According to Business Software Alliance (BSA),
Software Piracy  is the unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted software. This can be done by copying, downloading, sharing, selling, or installing multiple copies onto personal or work computers. What a lot of people don't realize or don't think about is that when you purchase software, you are actually purchasing a license to use it, not the actual software. That license is what tells you how many times you can install the software, so it's important to read it. If you make more copies of the software than the license permits, you are pirating.

It is clearly stated that software piracy is an act of stealing where most of the software pirated users doesn't realise that they are stealing some other peoples property to gain their own revenue.

Studies have been done in BSA and results have been published as below:

"Software piracy negatively affects much more than just the industry.  It also puts a strain on technology companies’ ability to invest in new jobs and new technologies; harms local resellers and services firms; lowers government tax revenues; and increases the risk of cyber crime and security problems.  A recent IDC study conducted for BSA found that reducing software piracy by ten percentage points over four years could deliver billions in economic growth and hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Of the 108 countries included in the report, the use of pirated software dropped in sixty-seven, and rose in only eight. However, because the worldwide PC market grew fastest in high-piracy countries, the worldwide PC software piracy rate increased by three percentage points to 38% in 2007.  "

Billions and billions losses occured but yet pirated users doesn't seen and most of them doesn't know about it. But there are peoples that take Software Piracy issue seriously and do spend alot of time studying Software Protection to prevent illegal usage and protection their own software from piracy.

Is your software well protected?
Software Proctection is a term that is well known in software developers where they strive themselve to have better and better protection each time to protect their software been pirated and for illegal usage. So, most of the software nowadays are protected somehow in a software based license protection or a hardware based licensed protection.

Is Software based License Protection Enough?
Software based Software License Protection is the earliest protection method available and usually the protected application will require user to key in Serial No., License Key or Unlock Code to activate the software license. Most of the third party Software License Protection provider will provide a ready made encryption engine of which software developers can use this to encrypt their software applications as to add the protection layer onto their software applications. Usually, the protection will tie with some unique ID from the computer system such as Hard Disk ID or Network Card ID. Also due to this reason, usually if there is any hardware problem such as Hard Disk or Network Card spoilt, license re-activation will be needed. It will also means the Software Developers will need to keep track and verify the License Key reissue request from the end users, of which some end users might try to take advantage on it. As Software based Protection do not come with any additional devices, it will have to store all the licensing information into the computer system and mostly hide it inside registry.

Hardware Based Software License Protection
Hardware based Software License Protection is now the most popular protection method where the end user will require to plug in the valid hardware device to the computer in order to run the application. Third party provider will sell the devices which is commonly called Dongles together with software SDK for software developers to do the integration. Usually for Hardware based Software License Protection, end user will not require to key in any Serial No., License Key nor Unlock Code, just plug in the Dongle and run the application, the protection will authenticate the license through Dongle. There are many different forms of Dongles available in the market and the most advanced Dongles are now built based on MCU Smart Card of which it is able to provide very maximum protection and thus make hacking almost impossible. As now, software developers are able to determine your software licenses with their Dongles thus make software distribution much easier and more secure.

Both Software and Hardware Based Protection have their own Pros and  Cons. Different software developers might have different preferences on selecting either Software based or Hardware based Software License Protection into their software applications. The common factors influence their decisions are as below:-

Total Cost of Ownership
- This will include overall investment on acquire such protection method which can be the Initial cost to obtain, cost to integrate and cost per software license. Most importantly, will the choice taken provide positive return on investment.

Time to Roll-Out
- Overall implementation time, will this protection affect the software roll out schedule or will the integration consume too much of our resources to accomplish it. A good protection strategy should find the right balance point among this consideration.

Security
- How strong can the protection method combat against the potential threat of being pirated, usually higher value software might require higher security protection then low value mass market software.

Business Model
- Whether the protection method can best suit into their overall business model of which will include product distribution, product pricing, licensing management and of course marketing activities.

Why most of the software developers choose hardware based software license protection? To know more, please visit http://www.rockey.com.my for more information about hardware based software licensed protection and try and see how well can he protect your precious software.

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Softkey E-Solution Sdn Bhd is incorporated in Malaysia in 1998 (formerly known as Softkey E-Solution) by a group of young entrepreneurs with the business focus of software and digital security. Started by providing software based license protection solution and later Softkey move on to signed as Exclusive Regional Distributor for Feitian Technologies Co. Ltd - World leading digital security devices manufacturer and provider from Beijing, for distributing complete range of ROCKEY's products in South East Asia.