Byron
"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust."
-- Demosthenes
On Jan 9, 2005, at 11:37 AM, Gordon Webster wrote:
Dear Byron
First off, I would say that 22 out of a class of 33 isn't bad at all - if most students had decided to share a copy of your software and work together in pairs, you might have expected only 50% (or even less if they worked together in larger study groups).
I have polled this list about software protection issues and have received some great advice from people who've obviously thought about it a great deal more than I have. I'll bet the essence of the advice you'll get will revolve around the question of how much time you'll want to spend to net that extra 30% of non-payers instead of spending that time improving your software (or developing your next product).
If you are interested, I have experimented in rev, to see what kinds of metrics I can extract that can uniquely identify a user's computer. One obvious approach for Windows is to use the serial number of the user's Windows distribution which can be extracted from the registry. This would mean that a thieved copy would not run on another students computer unless they had also cloned the Windows OS as well (or tinkered with the registry which is dangerous and a deterrent for most). I am not that familiar with the MAC OS, but I imagine there is some similar registration code that identifies a user's OS license. In your case, you would have to provide an authorization code for each of your users, but for 70 people it is feasible.
I am curious to know what people do for distributions to larger numbers of people. Perhaps some of the gurus on this list would be willing to share their expertise for the current generation of newbs like myself - this topic affects us all as rev developers and I would love to know what approaches people are using (Kee, I still owe you an email about this, I apologise for not having gotten back to you - I haven't forgotten :-)
Best
Gordon
--- Byron Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolutionThis week we got the results of the first adoption of our flagship product Created Equal: Sex and Gender. The professor is using it as a text in a class of 33. Only 22 students bought it. While a couple students are sharing materials, the rest I fear is theft. In 2 weeks it will be used in another class of 70-100. Any suggestions about how to go about copy protecting our product. (It ships on 2 CDs or a single DVD in case that's relevant)
Byron
H. L. Mencken:
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com
===== :::::::::: Gordon Webster :::::::::: _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
_______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
