Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 23:50:31 10/29/02
Go up one level in this thread
On October 30, 2002 at 02:18:03, ludicrous wrote: >Below are some suggestions for Chessbase with the intention of Countering those >blatant pirates. > > > >1) I would like to suggest that Chessbase adopt the >Counter-Strike/Command&Conquer CD-KEY strategy. Before anybody can log-in and >play on the playchess server, he must have a valid CD-KEY to log in. So far, I >have not heard anything that has defeated this strategy. >This will hopefully limit those people who use pirate Chessbase Software to play >online. > >2) To counter those who pirate the engines: This is tougher, but anyway... > >A wild suggestion: > >Panda Antivirus' Method >1)A chessbase customer buys the CD from a licenced shop. >2)He installs it. Engines work for thirty days. After which they will have to >'refuel' via step 3 to allow continued use of the engines. >3)In one of the menus, there is a button which allows his software to connect to >Chessbase, in turn sends unique information from his computer. This unique >information is used to allow the chessbase people to compile a 'key' which they >send back to the specific user. >4)User installs this specific key. No more engine nags. > >Combine these methods with the usual methods of REBEL, GENIUS or SHREDDER 5 to >boost security. > >This is very hard for the users and chessbase people, but sacrifice! The future >will be better for all of us. And Chessbase could kiss half their sales goodbye if they did something this stupid. The _ONLY_ thing that piling on more copy protection schemes does is penalize the people who legitimately purchase the product. Chessbase could spend months or years piling on the anti-cracker stuff, and for each month they piled on more security it would take the crackers maybe an extra day to crack it. So Chessbase spends a year piling on security, and now it'll take the crackers 2 weeks instead of 1 day before it's product is up on some file sharing utility. For a perfect example of what I'm talking about, look no further than Chessmaster. We all heard about how Chessmaster 9000 was going to have this copy protection, and within days after it was released, it could be found on file sharing utilities (no I didn't download it, I was just checking to prove my point). Meanwhile, the users who legitimately bought the product are stuck with having to constantly prove to Chessbase or whoever that they did in fact buy the product. Maybe you can keep people from playing on the Fritz server or the Chessmaster server. Who cares? There are dozens of other places to play online chess, and the people who illegally downloaded the product are using a crack anyway so they are never bothered with "It's been 2 weeks, please insert your CD" crap, while all of the users who did buy it legally have to put up with that stuff. I think that adding this kind of copy protection does nothing but hurt the sales. Maybe I'll buy Chessmaster 9000, but before too long I'm going to get real tired of that cd check, and when Chessmaster 10K comes around, I'll probably choose a different product like Fritz. Of course, if Fritz 8 has some annoying copy protection method, I'll probably decide to get something else the next time around. Besides, the goal is to prevent people from just copying it, forcing them to go and buy a copy. The people who are downloading it illegally probably aren't going to go buy it if you make the product uncopyable (which is impossible, but if...). They're probably junior high kids who have $10 to their name, or they're downloading it because they're too lazy to go buy it, or whatever. If someone was serious about the product, they're not going to download a potentially virus ridden illegal copy and have to hackishly run all kinds of cracks and extra programs just to be able to bypass the security. I don't care if your engine is 100 ELO points stronger than the rest of the field if it's annoying as hell to use. If I pay for a product, I want to be able to use it, and have it work, period. Russell
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