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After reading this other article earlier today, piracy was mentioned in it, and I feel it is worthy of discussion.
First of all, as I mentioned in the other article, developers really need to stop complaining. Part of being a programmer is being creative and innovative, not repetitive and cliche. For about a decade, key codes have been used to protect products. Then online registrations were used. Sometimes keys had a limit to them. None of this is efficient. Key codes are useless cause they're just about the easiest thing to crack, anyone could do it if they spent some time and research. Online registration WOULD be useful, if the systems weren't automated, making it just as ineffective as registering a product offline. Limited registrations would be a good idea, but what happens when someone just happens to install a program one too many times on the same computer? That isn't really fair, because there could be only 1 product key being used at a time and you would have to buy a new one when thats empty.
As another note, sometimes, programmers need to know that their products are just asking to be pirated. Look at Linux for example - there are THOUSANDS of decent programs and utilities that are free, and whatever the equivalent program/utility on Windows or Mac would be is something you'd have to pay for. Why would someone pay for some simple program like an audio editor or a CD writer when you could get it for free? Programmers need to think, especially when it comes to making something that has already been released several times. And if they want money, they ought to make a package deal if they are to do simple and/or cliched programs.
So to conclude this, do I myself have any efficient ideas on how to stop piracy? No, but that is partially why I posted this - so you can help give out ideas.