Thursday, February 3, 2005
On Piracy and Malicious Responses...
Posted by Janak Parekh in "THOUGHT" @ 02:00 PM
An interesting piece of news is floating around the Pocket PC Blogosphere: apparently the latest version of Anton Tomov's Pocket Mechanic will hard-reset your device if you're using an illegally-generated code for the software (i.e., a pirated copy). 8O
"After reading this thread at Aximsite where users complain about hard resets invoked by Pocket Mechanic I thought to shed some light on Anton Tomov's crude ways of dealing with software pirates...Use a pirated or blacklisted serial with Pocket Mechanic, Pocket Mechanic will detect it, and send your PDA with all its lovely content to Nirvana land."
I have to say, I agree with the linked poster -- there's no question that piracy (or, copyright infringement if you prefer) is ethically and legally wrong, but that does not mean a software developer should have license to erase the contents of your device. Indeed, there's a number of scenarios I could think of that would directly affect honest users -- what if the license validation code has a bug? Or what if a user pays for the software through a software download site that gives them an illegal code? As a user, I will stay away from a product that has any form of automatically doing that.
That said, I'm not sure where it's "fair" to draw the line. Piracy is a nagging problem for software developers. I think many of us would agree that having the software self-destruct when detecting a pirated code is fair behavior. But let's think about the gray area. How about hiding a file on the device that prevents any future or past versions of the software from running? Or, how about having it pop up a modal dialog asking for a legitimate license and not letting the user go back to their tasks until they fill one in? How do you think software developers can best combat piracy yet not alienate users?
Update 2/4: Anton has posted a clarification on his forums. He states that the code does check for one specific widely-distributed pirated serial number (although he doesn't clarify what it does in that case), and that the entry of an "invalid" serial will not cause a hard reset.
Second update: According to the same thread, v1.51 of Pocket Mechanic contains no such code. I'm glad to hear it, and hopefully we won't have to revisit this topic again.
"After reading this thread at Aximsite where users complain about hard resets invoked by Pocket Mechanic I thought to shed some light on Anton Tomov's crude ways of dealing with software pirates...Use a pirated or blacklisted serial with Pocket Mechanic, Pocket Mechanic will detect it, and send your PDA with all its lovely content to Nirvana land."
I have to say, I agree with the linked poster -- there's no question that piracy (or, copyright infringement if you prefer) is ethically and legally wrong, but that does not mean a software developer should have license to erase the contents of your device. Indeed, there's a number of scenarios I could think of that would directly affect honest users -- what if the license validation code has a bug? Or what if a user pays for the software through a software download site that gives them an illegal code? As a user, I will stay away from a product that has any form of automatically doing that.
That said, I'm not sure where it's "fair" to draw the line. Piracy is a nagging problem for software developers. I think many of us would agree that having the software self-destruct when detecting a pirated code is fair behavior. But let's think about the gray area. How about hiding a file on the device that prevents any future or past versions of the software from running? Or, how about having it pop up a modal dialog asking for a legitimate license and not letting the user go back to their tasks until they fill one in? How do you think software developers can best combat piracy yet not alienate users?
Update 2/4: Anton has posted a clarification on his forums. He states that the code does check for one specific widely-distributed pirated serial number (although he doesn't clarify what it does in that case), and that the entry of an "invalid" serial will not cause a hard reset.
Second update: According to the same thread, v1.51 of Pocket Mechanic contains no such code. I'm glad to hear it, and hopefully we won't have to revisit this topic again.
