What copy protection technique do you use?
I'm thinking about adding some kind of copy protection to one of my tools.
- Do you have any experience with that?
- Have you developed your own protection techniques or did you buy 3rd party software?
- Do you think it is a viable method to increase sales? (In a private and/or corporate environment)
- What do you do to prevent hassling your paying customers? In most cases it's the paying customers who suffer from a bad copy protection, and I don't want this to happen to my customers. (Even if that means accepting some freeloaders)
I'm especially interested in techniques which allow a trial or freeware version of your software for private use but limit the usefulness in a corporate environment.
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Answer
Whatever technique you use, your software will be copied. The actual aim of copy protection is to prevent honest customers from being tempted to be unfair.
The minimum copy protection technique is enough. The maximum is not worth the time spent.
Moreover, I've heard that some developers provide user support to any user who asks, customer or not. The idea is that happy users may become faithful customers.