Preventing Sostware Piracy

Hi there.

I have a long-standing problem which I hope might be solved here. I have paid several developers to complete this project but all have failed to deliver what they clearly stated they could.

I wish to sell a very small piece of software from a Wordpress site and avoid it's potential piracy by locking it into the user's computer.

The idea is that the user downloads the function limited trial sw and after a given period, purchase the key which unlocks it's full functionality and time restriction.

The key is generated based on the MAC address of the user's computer, thus restricting it's use to that computer only.

My question is, what would be the best way to implement this process, which must be automated via the Wordpress site?

I should point out that I am not a developer and laymen's terms would help me enormously, thanks.

Well the short answer is, you can't prevent it at all.

At some point, the protection code will essentially boil down to


All your enterprising cracker has to do is turn this into


At the machine level, this is simply a matter of replacing say "BEQ" (branch if equal) with "BNE" (branch if not equal).

What you really need to watch out for is creating a $1000 lock for a $10 item. All the time you're spending on improving the protection is time NOT spent on improving the product (so that more people might be more inclined to buy it to begin with).

Consider some alternatives where registration brings some additional benefits which are not solely dependent on just having the software.

Hi,

My opinion: don't bother with trying to prevent piracy.

The crackers will still get your software for free, whilst you succeed in annoying your users when your security system prevents the software running on their computer.

Best regards,
AstroTux.