Can Software Piracy Be Stopped?

[garbage 0]

probably not since someone will alwys be trying to do it, and im sure there will always be a way of getting around things to be able to steal softwares and other things.

[bhavesh 0]

One more point to stop piracy.

Every software should have two licence:

For personal use in a single Home PC - Distribute it free.

For Institutions - Sell them your product.

People need to learn that odds are you can end up finding a free version of the same kinda software faster then you can find a crack for that software from that company

As free versions of popular softwares are available and with the same features, then thee is no need to buy the expensive version.

 

Software companies should understand if they can't stop people from making and using cracked versions, then they should start distributing it for free. The consequence wil be:

Closing of sites with cracked softwares.

Publicity of their product.

And if people like the software, they will recommend it to the institutes, they are working. Software companies should target these institutes, and should sell there products there.

[T100 0]

It doesn't work that way. Software privacy has been there for more than 20 years. Ever since the Internet was made, there are simply no ways to stop people from trading software online. The earliest scene was run on BBS boards on CompuServe, and people are trading cracked software on an early version email system at AOL. And then groups like Razor1911 began to surface. And they become so legendary that people from all around the world are taking part in cracking and reverse engineering. There are reverse engineers from Australia to Scandinavia, from America to China, and the tools they develop are getting more and more powerful. People are now using ollydbg and IDAPro to look at the codes directly and tools like softice are extremely user friendly to coders now. There are magazines and books teaching people the art in China and people are picking up the skill much quicker. On the other hand, boardband has become much more popular and it is not unusual to download an 8.5GB DVD-9 for about 3-4 hours. Software is much smaller compared to a DVD and so it gets transferred by BT easily. There are no ways that these two trends can be stopped easily. People are no longer checking for search engines for pirated software. They now tend to go more underground, by taking part in P2P forums which require log in and sharing for points before you can take part in downloading. The scene just becomes more accessible to non-elite users, as many people are setting up their FTP on the web easily. While it may help if those software companies check over nforce more frequently, the scene is just now so strong that it will continue to live with the Internet for the future to come. Just imagine, even software giants like Microsoft gets their codes reverse engineered and their ecliptic function encryption for keys cracked. The reverse engineers at the scene are just so talented.

[bhavesh 0]

T100 has explained the history, tools and about reverse engineers nicely. Great work.

The reverse engineers at the scene are just so talented.

I think these engineers work at office to make the software crack proof and at home they try to find out the cracks.

There are reverse engineers from Australia to Scandinavia, from America to China, and the tools they develop are getting more and more powerful. People are now using ollydbg and IDAPro to look at the codes directly and tools like softice are extremely user friendly to coders now. There are magazines and books teaching people the art in China and people are picking up the skill much quicker.

As explained by T100 why softwares can't be protected against cracks. I would say, if software companies adopt my methods suggest in last post then they might be able to do so, what do other members think.

[iGuest 3]

Everyone knows it canCan Software Piracy Be Stopped?

the thing is that, no matter how many procedures people use to ensure that something cannot get pirated. People will always be a step ahead. Because companies have a select ammount of people to make the code, while the population has 100x that ammount trying to crack it.

-reply by interesting

 

[aloKNsh 0]

noo...........i dont think so because if it is stopped then one or other will download from p2p and stopping p2p is a little tricky.Yes u can stop by destroying the internet loli know this is impossible nowbut if the government is too strict then we can do sofor ex in china there the biggest piracy site (sorry but i dont the name of the site currently) for music and then warner bros., disney , universal, 20th century and many files a case against the site so it was forced to shutdown.....................

[iGuest 3]

Look man..

People will always look for what is better for them and their economy in this case

Maybe if prices drop from everywhere (DVDs, softwares and music) it could exist a little chance for piracy to be over. But as long as people get what they want for FREE there will always exist.

-reply by Sergie

[The Simpleton 2]

I too think it's virtually impossible for piracy to end anytime soon, and even if all the companies which churn out media (music, movies, games, etc) drastically reduce their prices (which isn't going to happen anytime soon! ), many people are gonna look for a quick way to get what they want. And unfortunately, in many cases, piracy is the only way through which people can fulfill their selfish demands :DFor example, you have watched the latest blockbuster movie just now. As you walk out of the movie hall, you can't stop thinking about the movie. You want to watch it again, but you cant get tickets for the next show. You go home, but still can't stop thinking about the movie. In desperation you turn to the internet and check if there's a pirated copy in there. It's no surprise when you find a copy with crystal clear quality print. What would you do now?You would say that you wouldn't such a thing, but everyone's not like you! A majority of people would download the movie as soon as they come back from the theater. That's the hard truth. Same is the case for music. As soon as people hear a good song from somewhere, the first place they look for is not the local music store, but their favorite "warez" sites to download it. And if you want to talk about software, please don't get me started! Agreed that the developers work hard on the software and they deserve to be paid, but we don't really know whether the exorbitant prices they charge for a small piece of software is worth it or not. A decent computer in India with 2GB RAM, 320GB hard-disk space and an LCD monitor can be bought at a price of Rs.20000 (~$415) but add the Windows Vista Home Basic and Microsoft Office Student and Home Edition software to the computer and the price reaches almost Rs.30000! Now why would someone like to get a deal like that? That's why software piracy is still ruling the roost.So as of now, there is no real method to stop piracy; any form of piracy. And there's no saying if we'll ever find a reliable method to stop it. We may be able to catch the source and the people who download, but there are simply too many people like these! Wipe out one and another will come up.

[Andy93 0]

I don't think piracy will ever be stopped due to the ridiculously high fee for some applications unless the government start to crack down on it, but would that be cost effective hiring people to spy on your browsing habits and to pay the legal fees to shut down the offenders.However one way that may work would be for the developers to allow ISP's to host many of the popular programs like Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows that can be accessed for a small monthly fee say ?5.99 ($10 approximate) which have a monthly license that as long as the fee is payed will be renewed. This would help users who only pirate programs because of the price use them for a fraction of the normal retail price this also would maybe help with minors that download illegally as the parents wouldn't get punished for something that they have done.Another way that could help is raise the awareness of open source alternatives that can be just as good as the or better than paid equivalent.My theory is that there is piracy due to the price of software. If it was cheaper more people would buy it. This would in the long run probably gain more revenue for the developers and with storage media getting cheaper every year it can't hurt to try it.

[inverse_bloom 0]

As most people seem to unanimously agree piracy without a doubt cannot be stopped. First of all cracking encrypted data has been been an age long battle for thousands of years where no encryption method has been found to be unbreakable (just much harder). Governments putting more measures in place to try to stop piracy will only cause people to go underground. In this instance information and activities for reverse engineering will still be accessible, but will cause people to operate more covertly. Companies can try and make it harder, but crackers will automate their patches to keep it easy for the average person to use. Maybe the only way is by all companies to make software cracking difficult so crackers begin to give up (too much bother). If governments were to try to monitor and enforce restrictions on P2P sharing this would work. But then we wouldn't have what makes the internet so good, which is the freedom to share or to use digital information as we desire.

[ASHISHRANJAN 0]

HMM NONOT AT ALLcoz it some of the most important issues that today whole world is exericing

[puneye 0]

My answer is also no. As growth of internet and other technology life makes easier but they also growing piracy. There are large team who are developing piracy websites, even you get $1000 software for free. I think the main reason behind piracy is high cost, low economic level. Most of people unable to buy original license of software so they go to where they are find free. The piracy websites provide free then they get popular for free. I think developed countries like US, UK, Canda, Japan 's people don't use piracy software but undeveloped country use piracy software. There are more developing countries in the world than developed country, so piracy can't be controlled. Many country has not strong rules and regulations about software piracy. The condition of Nepal, you can buy a DVD film or MS OFFICE 2007 in about $0.9, you can imagine how piracy going developed their market.It is difficult to stop piracy because there are lots of cracker than developers. To stop piracy developer or software production company should developed that software which can't be cracked easily. Government should make laws. It only reduce piracy not completely stop. There is big problem of piracy music in Nepal so Nepali Music industry also going down. People have mobile, cds, computers then they share files, softwares, music between them because they are friend and make aware not to buy it.

[Nameless_ 1]

Yeah... this is most definitely a NO.In replying to the first poster, I think that if a company's product isn't up for illegal downloads and all that, it just means that the people that tries to copy softwares just didn't copy it, a hint that the product might be slightly useless and quite unpopular.Piracy can never be controlled, because even when companies finds ways to stop their products from being stolen and/or sold illegally, the hackers will always find ways to get through the system. Just like someone in the above posts said, it just gets harder, but there are still loopholes in the system and hackers will eventually get through.After all, most hackers are one step ahead of society... just like strains of flus and all that. New injections have to be replaced by even newer ones because of their mutation and newly gained immune system.

[100janovski 0]

NO...Every second man in this world is using piracy or warez. I'm one of them . The piracy it's outspread and nobody can stop it. Who wants to pay 100$ for a software when he can download it for free?

[rpgsearcherz 5]

The issue with piracy is that it's not only about getting free items. In fact, those who crack it *own the originals* in most cases.There are two reasons it will never end.1) Cracking is fun. It's a way to say "I'm smarter than you. There is nothing you can possibly think of that I can't circumvent." A direct example is when the Xbox 360 was released and Bill Gates claimed it was uncrackable. Within hours after the system's release there was already a video of someone who cracked it and was using a burned game. Why did he do it? Solely because Bill Gates challenged him.2) Popularity. When someone (say Razor1911) cracks a lot of software they get the fame associated with it. Of course normal people don't know who these usernames belong to, but regardless the fame is still there.And there is absolutely not even one piece of software that can't be cracked. And there never will be. "No matter how smart you are, someone else is smarter" plays a huge role here. It doesn't matter if you're the best programmer in the world, someone can dissect it.The funniest crack I ever saw was with a program called SoftIce. This is a debugging program so it shows hex code and everything and allows you to edit things "on the fly" as the program runs.Well, they released a 3 day or so trial of the software (it was $1000+ if I remember right) so businesses could test it out. And during the trial some guy used THEIR trial software to create a key generator for the program, and it worked.That, by far, is to me the funniest crack ever done. Using someone's own software to crack itself.