Rich: I agree with you on software protection for the little guy. I have used the expiration thing, as you have. I have also used many other things such as dongles, defects in diskettes, monitoring the application size (to protect from resource alteration) and even providing hardware with imprinted serial numbers. It's been a long trip to arrive at the conclusion that nothing works well. However, computers are becoming faster and larger and with that comes more elaborate means to monitor ownership. Build a better mousetrap and keep ahead of those engineering better mice. The Internet also poses some rather interesting possibilities to keep track of where your software is and what people are doing with it. While I haven't done it (been tempted), it's certainly wide open for your software to communicate with you IF the user is online. I could do this easy without the typical user knowing what's happening, but have been reluctant to do so because of ethical reasons. Do the actions of software pirates give you the right to expose their activities? Interesting question. Also, keep in mind that the "next upgrade" provides a real opportunity/need for a pirate to buy a copy. Therein lies an opportunity to change pirates to users and thus a reason to promote pirates in the first place. Another interesting concept. The entire concept of copy protection is still quite open to speculation, consideration and innovation. tedd --- you wrote >I hate to burst your bubble, but if you are a programmer trying to make a >living selling low volume software, you cannot survive without copy >protection. I tried it the first year I started my business back in 1990 >without copy protection and companies were stealing my software, period. >They would buy one program and install it on every Mac in the office. I >would have gone out of business without copy protection. > >It is a different story if you have a product that is high volume. Then you >can afford to let everyone steal it and still make a profit. > >I actually got the idea to require registration of my software several years >ago (I wonder if Microsoft got the idea from me). It expires in one week >after purchase if it is not registered. Also, if someone copies it to >another Mac, it turns back into a demo and expires in one week. This system >has worked very well for me. I handle site licenses differently. If a >company buys 10 or more users, there is no copy protection except for >checking the network for the max number of users on the site license. > >Regarding fuzzy checksum, you could not make it too fuzzy or you would have >people calling you every day to re-register the software when some minor >parameter changed. > >It would be really nice if the Mac serial number was reliable. Then you >would know for sure if the software was moved. > > >Rich Love - Carnation Software > Terminal emulations for Macintosh - MacWise, MacToPic Plus and SBMac. > Email Checker, Carnation Desktop Pictures, Desktop Screen Saver, > Index & Shutdown, One Touch Scan and QuitAll > Visit our home page at http://www.carnation-software.com > 512 858-9234 -- http://sperling.com