Finding the Balance

Ease of use and Security?

The primary challenge facing copy protection and volume licensing systems of today is finding the rightbalance between ease of use and security - unfortunately, many have failed to find this balance.

• At one extreme the software becomes so aggressive that it invalidates licenses in reaction to superficial changes to the PC, meaning that software will fail to work after the user updates Windows or reformats their hard disk.
• At the other end - ease of use at the expense of security - and the software becomes so pliable that users can easily crack it.

Fortunately, there is now a company that has developed a range of products which can help developers to secure their software while at the same time eliminating re-licensing problems.

This company uses a new patent pending technology that finds the right balance, protecting both your intellectual property and the end-user experience.

Prevent complaints and re-licensing calls

These products enable you to protect your software even in the event of hard disk reformats, windows reinstalls and system board replacements, whilst the technology provides a robust protection mechanism that won’t inconvenience your end-users. Furthermore, with easy registration using either application-based activation over the Internet or via a web page, it is easy to deploy.

These new products offer a solid return on investment by protecting you from the costly failures of other software Anti-piracy solutions and are available in both hardware and digital SDK solutions.

In either case licensing is facilitated by hardware using a standard USB Flash Drive or Internet licensing using a standard Hosted Activation Service.

Making it easy for customers to move a license

Want to reduce your support calls from End Users trying to move licenses between PCs or to a new PC upgrade? This new technology offers multiple ways to quickly and easily move a license using floppies, USB Flash Drive and our Internet Web Server.

It takes less than 1 minute to move a license and your support costs are reduced accordingly.

No frustrating license key entry mistakes

An end to complex and long alpha numeric licensing codes – at last! Surveys show that these cause real problems for End Users, accounting for 1000s of calls when they transcribed them incorrectly from the purchasing emails -  this new technology avoids all this by using a single string of only 5/16 numeric digits, practically impossible to get wrong whether sent via label, phone, email or fax.

Robust protection that's never been cracked

The problem with most products on the market is that they are based on 10 year old technology. This type of protection places files on the hard disk of the End User. These files are then easily found and manipulated or - more likely - accidentally removed or damaged.

Software "crackers" are known to use one of the programs that track where copy protection software stores your license information so that they can manipulate it. However, this new patent pending technology prevents that, because there are no copy protection license files accessible on the User's hard drive. Neither does it store license information in the registry.

Using this patent pending technology therefore means that people seeking to crack your copy protection can't remove all references to your program and infinitely renew free trial periods or restore a removed license.

To further prevents hackers this technology does not require a connection to the Internet to monitor licenses, meaning even less inconvenience for End Users.

This technology can be integrated with your application in just a single afternoon, and can be done without compromising your design, layout, schema, or coding.

A new way to identify an installation without the end user hassle

Traditionally, these systems look at the configuration of a PC and its components and 'decide' if the user should have a license based on things like the motherboard and LAN card. This is often called the 'fingerprint' of the PC.

The problems arise in the normal 'life' of a PC as many End Users like to update their Operating Systems, they have 'crashes', like to use defragmentation utilities and upgrade various components of their PC hardware. These normal changes cause first generation copy protection systems to fail.

This lack of reliability prevents legitimate End Users and System Administrators using copy protected software when they upgrade, update or modify their PCs.

The end result of these failures is more hassle for your end users. It forces them to re-license - often having to call up your support desk to get their new licenses. This is quite clearly bad news for you, the End Users and for sales of your software.