Controlling software piracy?

[cranium1200]

Hello all,
I have developed a software for my company. And it's being widely used illegally.How can I control to stop piracy of my software? i came across an open source project named Paragent . Any suggestions regarding this would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Cranium1200

[mostafadotnet]

There are many ways like online-registeration to protect your software but this can also be hacked.
This is based on the type of users and their levels of computer knowledge.
There may be some newbie or some crackers out there cracking your software.
Explanation is the key!

600) 1(_)[|<.

[Auzzie]

Well i dont know much about Paragent but ionCube is a software that i would recommend to help slow software piracy down, yes i said slow not stop because it will never be stopped, not if the cracker is determined and has the right resources.

[MattEvans]

The only way to stop "piracy" is to release truly open, public domain, software; nobody can pirate something that's already theirs!

I guess that's not what you want to do, though. As Auzzie said, all you can do is make it more difficult for someone to steal your software, make sure it has a tight license, and then sue if/when someone does eventually 'pirate' it.

The means for 'making it difficult' depends on what kind of software it is. Generally, you can't protect HTML and Javascript using any technical means, because it has to be translated into source code before the browser reads it, and any good 'pirate' can outdo your attempts to encrypt or 'hide the code' in these languages with only one tool ( a customized browser ). You can of course, use the law to protect what you don't want others to take, in just about any medium.

In other mediums, perhaps its easier to 'make it difficult'. Anything that is serverside code ( PHP, Perl, CGI, JSP, ASP, etc, etc ) is protected very well because it's never sent to the browser: unless you give it to someone or go lax with the security at the server, nobody can get their hands on it.

Any deliverable application can be protected with keys and then low-level obfuscated; but, to my knowledge, no-one's ever released a useful software application with protection that someone else hasn't cracked ^_-

[MattEvans]

Thread moved to Software Developers Lounge, since this question was multiply-posted and thus probably doesn't relate specifically to Web Development.

[jwenting]

The only truely effective means to prevent software from being pirated is to not distribute it.

Instead run it in the form of a web service, protected by strong credentials and billed per use (either amount of data transmitted or number of calls placed to the application).
Anyone foolish enough to hand out their credentials to others will pay for the use those others make of the application.
If those credentials are further linked to ip addresses or address ranges things get even more secure as the application is now both impossible to crack (not being in the hands of the crackers, ever), as well as the use of it linked to a specific paying account at a specific known location.

[techbrain55]

hello there,
The only way is to have a key that has to be entered for each program or something. I don't think anybody has figured out how to stop it. By looking through paragent i think that it can help you a lot for this piracy. I would suggest you to go ahead with paragent.
Regards,
Techbrain55

[sarehu]

Flood the internet with lots of fake pirated copies of your company's software. People who want to pirate your software won't be able to tell the difference until they've downloaded it and tried it.

[bmora96]

Hello there,
Thanks for the information. I came to know that newbies are making lots of trouble in hacking the softwares. as far as i concerned paragent does alert me on updates and all.so no more worries regarding this.
Thanks.
Bmora96