Unfortunately software piracy is growing at an incredible speed. Software piracy refers to making illegal copies of computer software. It is the result of countless numbers of individuals who disregard the copyright law that have made it a necessity to produce methods to stop illegally reproduced software.
There are various ways by which you can conduct software piracy, such as softlifting, wherein you buy a single patented version of a software program and it gets uploaded onto multiple computers ignoring the terms of the license. There is also software counterfeiting where someone makes several copies of copyrighted software and makes it accessible to end users. Counterfeit software can be seen in computer stores where a software program is pre-installed as a way of making the computer more attractive to customers. Software piracy can also take the form of someone renting software for short-term use.
Needless to say--particularly if you are a software developer--this kind of replication of software is damaging to you and your consumers. The amount of time, hard work and the cash the developer spends to be able to develop software is lost by piracy as the developer is loses income that is rightfully theirs. Software developers need to safeguard their 'intellectual property', and obviously their profits, by implementing software protection.
The objective of copy protection is to ward off illegal use of software programs and any methods employed to do that is know as software copy protection.
There are two basic techniques to copy protect software:
1. Software binding (also called “activations”)
Software bindings, work by the software publisher providing a serial number or unique license code to unlock the software
2. Hardware keys (also called “dongles”)
Hardware keys (dongles) are small devices that plug into the USB port . If the dongle is present the software will run, if not it won't. The best dongles provide nearly un-crackable security against piracy. In addition, it is straightforward for a legitimate client to use numerous pcs and only have one license (stored on the dongle) for the software. Here a small hardware is plugged into the the USB port of your pc. The software will only run if it is present. A good dongle is able to supply nearly un-crackable piracy protection while at the same time making it very easy for genuine end users to use several computers even though they only have one software license stored on the dongle.
Author Resource:
Wibu Systems US offers solutions for copy protection and software protection .
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