>>By all means, serialize, personnalise, check the integrity of >>personalisation info at random moments... but don't go for >>'hard' protection. > >On the other hand, having protection helps you to keep the price down. I >like the idea of including some kind of once-only protection (such as a >registration number based on the serial number of the host computer, if it >is possible to access such) so that you can sleep at night. We li'l guys >don't have much of a police force at our beck and call to do random serial >number checking. No Mac systems contain a unique serial number. You can try to build one using the init date of the drive and user name and so on. But if the user changes the drive or something, they are going to be miffed when your software wants a new serial number... >No one can stop the hard core professional hackers from bypassing your >serial number code, but you could embed some key data item within the >serial number itself, so that the program would not run without it. A serial number is sort of key data. But if you start getting too fancy, you'll be wasting too much of your efforts I feel. >This wouldn't be to much trouble for the user--it would just involve >calling you and getting the serial number, then typing it in once. > >On the other hand, you would have so hire someone to answer the phone. > >Has anyone used a similar scheme? Is it feasible? I haven't released any >commerical software myself, but have high hopes to do so. I use Kagi, they email me when a sale goes through and I either respond over the net, or via mail depending on the customer. Keep in mind all good protection comes down to one line of code. The protection routine itself. If any good hacker can find that, it's a simple matter to nop it out. And you can check in a 100 places and it won't matter at all. But don't help them by leaving in your MacsbugLabels... Mel Patrick - theWabbitGuy - mel@... mailto:mel@... http://www.intergate.bc.ca/business/mel