Software protection a neccessary step (Score 1)

You cannot stop software piracy, but you can add enough barriers to deter casual piracy as well as make it time consuming to maintain cracks for your titles. The first step is choosing a licensing system. You can do it yourself or acquire it, but make sure what ever system you deploy it contains a tamper proof license format. Without it, the first cracker to reverse engineer your software will create a key generator that any non-tech savy person can use to obtain your software illegally. Tamper proofing can be achieved via a system using digital signature of the license file. The next thing you will need is software protection technology, its purpose is to deter reverse engineering and tampering of your binaries. Without this the cracker would simply create a patch for any licensing/activation scheme you come up with by bypassing functions in assembly code. Some software protection solutions having been intrusive (i.e., Sony, Microsoft SSP), but there are others out there in the market that don't break customer environments.