August 29, 2003

Symantec to start using Activation to reduce Piracy

SecurityFocus reports that Symantec will begin using product activation in its products to reduce the mass pirating of its software.

When Microsoft did this for XP, there was HUGE tremors in the community. As the first security product to do this, it will be interesting to see how people react.

What is your thoughts on this? I am still mulling over just how I will be doing license keying for my software which is going to be released before the end of the year, and would love to hear people's thoughts on this. What other sort of things have you seen that you like/dislike?

Posted by SilverStr at August 29, 2003 09:32 AM
Comments

Software license? What's that?

*g*

I am all for people getting $ for their hard work, but we all know how easily windows activation was defeated. As you've said often, the people that are going to pirate the software aren't the type of people who are going to pay for it.

I guess it's a tradeoff of PITA vs The number of licenses you are willing to lose. Some say that having even one copy stolen is too much, but if you make it a HUGE PITA for your customers, they (or the geeks that are going to be in charge of deploying it) are going to say that othersolution X will be less of a PITA. Of course, if you're the only dog on the block with the technology you can do whatever you want to piss off your customers, as Microsoft has shown us more than once.

Of course, I don't use symantec though, so it's completely irrelevant to me :)

Posted by: Arcterex at August 29, 2003 03:05 PM

Here's one vote for the honour system. Easier to install, easier to support, less code to write, etc.

Posted by: Wim at August 29, 2003 05:39 PM

just don't make it phone home. I wouldn't trust any security software that doesn't trust me.

(there's that word again. 'trust' comes up way often with regards to security :)

Posted by: raskal at August 29, 2003 08:14 PM