THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 10/03/2010 at 04:49, xxxxxxxx wrote:
I've decided that I am going to build in to my registration code that if the last five digits of the serial number are 12345 then my plugin is going to tell the person that this serial number is PIRATED.
in the unlikely event that one person in the world actually owns this license, and purchases my plugin, I will find a way around it.
~Shawn
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 17/03/2010 at 04:44, xxxxxxxx wrote:
hi,
Is there a way to make activation via the net like with adobe, or maybe is it possible to make hardware id and then the client send it to me so i will send him serial?
please, any advice.
thanks.
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 17/03/2010 at 12:10, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Maybe we can require the users to supply Maxon order numbers with their purchase. This is a unique number that people would have only received after purchasing C4D. And in our plugins have a field for this number that they must enter and it must match what they provided us?
How do people feel about that? Would that be worth our time?
~Shawn
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 17/03/2010 at 12:27, xxxxxxxx wrote:
MAXON can not share any information about their customers, that would be a breach of information privacy. I also don't see why you should be concerned about privated Cinema versions. The mechanism with the 11 digits of the Cinema serial is just an easy means to prohibit running more instances of your plugin at the same time than the customer owns. If the customer provides you with a pirated serial and it won't run, it is his own problem and I am pretty sure he has no legal rights to claim something. The use of pirated Cinema versions is MAXON's concern not yours.
cheers,
Matthias
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 03:48, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Originally posted by xxxxxxxx
The use of pirated Cinema versions is MAXON's concern not yours.
I agree. Why should we do a stricter protection than MAXON does? My plugin serials base on the 11 digits and the user's name. So the plugin serial can only work with a pirated c4d license, when the user makes his name public to the pirates. You may use your customers email address instead of the name for validating the plugin serial, so it would be a further inhibition level for him to give it away.
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 04:21, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Originally posted by xxxxxxxx
I agree. Why should we do a stricter protection than MAXON does? My plugin serials base on the 11 digits and the user's name. So the plugin serial can only work with a pirated c4d license, when the user makes his name public to the pirates.
Quoted for agreement. Software protection is always a trade-off between preventing someone pirating your app and inconveniencing the user to a point where they use someone else's app instead. TBH, for me the price I sold my first plugin at means it simply isn't worth the effort of trying to do anything more than a straightforward serial number check. I can understand that if you are selling a plugin costing hundreds of dollars you would feel very annoyed if someone gets it for free. I would probably feel the same. But if you lock your plugin to a particular machine, the user has to buy extra licenses to use on different machines - bearing in mind that it's legitimate under the Maxon license to use a single license of C4D on any machine (only one at a time, obviously!), so that you can - and people do - carry C4D around on an external drive and use it on different machines as their work requires. I think we should try to stick with that approach and lock plugin serials to C4D serials.
There's nothing to stop individual developers using something like Themida if they wish, as the developers of Vray for C4D have done. But this isn't problem-free; some users have found that antiviral software reports Themida as a virus. And forget dongles. They break or are lost or drop out at the worst moment.
Personally I think the current system works okay. I doubt that many sales have been lost due to people using pirated serial numbers. These people wouldn't have bought C4D or the plugin if they hadn't been able to get the knockoff version.
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 04:42, xxxxxxxx wrote:
I definintely think these are good points and I agree with them. I agree with Matthias that pirated C4D versions are Maxon's problem and not ours. I even got confirmation from Maxon that there is no legal action that can come against us for selling our plugins to people with pirated C4D copies.
The serial number approach has worked for me. The most time consuming part for me has been to have to refund money to people with what I know is a pirated serial number. I think at this point I am just selling my plugin to the people who buy it and if their serial number doesn't work properly because of their pirated version of c4d then that is their problem.
~Shawn
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 05:00, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Shawn, I agree entirely. With regard to refunds, yes, they're annoying. I got caught with that '12345' serial before this discussion started and it didn't even occur to me (how naive is that?) that it might be a keygen number. It's difficult to make a refund after several months - in fact I'm not even sure it's possible with Paypal after a certain time interval.
Other than that, I agree that if someone has a problem with the plugin because they're using a pirated copy of C4D, it's their problem, not mine.
Steve
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 05:12, xxxxxxxx wrote:
In the end everybody should be aware of 2 universal facts concerning software piracy:
1. If someone has crack knowledge and is willing to crack a software, he will. period. There is no 100% safe way to lock a software.
2. People using pirated software are not the target customer of you in any case. They are less than 0.1% of real customers. So any energy you put in piracy prevention is mostly for your own conscience rather than real protection (see point 1 again).
That´s why serial number protection is fine. People that really want to buy your software won´t care about cracking it or downloading pirated versions of them. They try the demo and then buy (or not) and that´s it. You should rather concentrate and collect your energy for other things, for example customer´s services. 
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 05:24, xxxxxxxx wrote:
but selling to a well known pirated version would be not a good idea because in that case the provided serial for the plugin would spread as well. just my 2c
cheers,
ello
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 06:08, xxxxxxxx wrote:
you should read point 2 again. No matter if you give out that serial or not (of course I don´t encourage you giving it out, don´t get that wrong) the ones that would use it will not pay for your plugin anyway. It doesn´t matter if you give it out or not. That is the point. These facts were true 10 years ago, they are true now and they will probably be also true in 10 years. It won´t change how these people think so it won´t change the behavior of these people and you can´t do anything about it. It´s a battle you cannot win so you better concentrate on the "real" people instead.
(That´s why cars mostly use the same lock system they did 40 years ago. The manufacturers know there are people stealing cars and that they have their tricks to open a car, but these people are not the target customer anyway so there is no need to spend millions of dollars for researching new locking systems, these people will find a way to open these up again. That´s why the car industry doesn´t really car changing anything. They rather spend their money to improve the car for the real customers)
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 18/03/2010 at 22:20, xxxxxxxx wrote:
My opinion is there are 3 kind of people, not only black and white.
So, my opinion is: We shall still focus on a good protection/register system so we DELAY (a little at least) a full version to be found, if our plugin becomes so popular 
Just my feeling, i never did a stadistic about this, maybe im totally wrong and it really is black and white
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 00:44, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Nobody denies there are these type of people. It´s about how many do what.
I cannot say anything about the "plugin bought or pirated plugin downloaded" situation as I cannot know which of my customers does it which way. I can only make a probability assumption from customers using a probable (or definite) pirated C4D version and then buy my plugin.
And my statistic from the last 10 years tells me that the percentage of warez users who bought my plugins is less then 0.1%. All other customers have unique and plausible c4d serials. Therefore I must assume, and according to statistics probability rules one can be quite sure, all other warez users rather download my plugin than buying it.
I agree and am sure there are variations according to popularity, price and size of the plugin but I can of course only judge this from my own plugins (though I had small and big ones over the years but well, everyone may have their own statistics).
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 01:58, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Originally posted by xxxxxxxx
I can only make a probability assumption from customers using a probable (or definite) pirated C4D version and then buy my plugin.And my statistic from the last 10 years tells me that the percentage of warez users who bought my plugins is less then 0.1%. All other customers have unique and plausible c4d serials. Therefore I must assume, and according to statistics probability rules one can be quite sure, all other warez users rather download my plugin than buying it.
I think that's a very useful statistic and certainly supports my own feelings about this. The only question which needs to be answered is whether people who own a legit copy of C4D will go on to download cracked versions of plugins. I think that's highly unlikely (and to suggest otherwise, by introducing harsher and harsher protection schemes) is likely to alienate honest customers. Just look at the complaints over Microsoft's Windows 'Genuine Advantage' program, for example. Those people who run pirate C4D copies will almost never buy a legit plugin license. So really, vast numbers of sales are not being lost to pirates because such people would never have paid in the first place. Which means that the only point of any protection scheme is to ensure that there is some return for all the effort put in, and so that purchasers know that those who don't purchase don't get to use the plugin.
I just think we should not worry too much about this issue. Time spent on ever more elaborate protection schemes, which are unlikely to work anyway, is time spent on not developing the actual plugin.
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 02:52, xxxxxxxx wrote:
yep, I agree.
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 03:25, xxxxxxxx wrote:
ditto.. Well said!
~Shawn
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 07:00, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Originally posted by xxxxxxxx
No matter if you give out that serial or not (of course I don´t encourage you giving it out, don´t get that wrong) the ones that would use it will not pay for your plugin anyway. It doesn´t matter if you give it out or not.
Well, it does matter: Certainly you are right in that the loss in direct sales is insignificant.
However, pirates compete with your customers, reducing the payoff your solution has for potential customers.
So if your plugin set is available for "free" aka as "stolen", your customers have to compete to some of those people.
Kabe
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 07:26, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Originally posted by xxxxxxxx
Well, it does matter: Certainly you are right in that the loss in direct sales is insignificant.
However, pirates compete with your customers, reducing the payoff your solution has for potential customers.
So if your plugin set is available for "free" aka as "stolen", your customers have to compete to some of those people.
Well, that is an unfair argument.
In that case I´d need to blame MAXON too for not making Cinema 4D cracksafe as all those warez people can therefore also use my plugin with a cracked c4d or even worse they can all take away work from official customers and compete with all of us. I doubt this is the right way to see this, cause then we can keep this on and on and MAXON could blame windows for not being crack safe so all those warez guys can use a pirated version of c4d on their plattform. Oh and let´s go on to the hardware guys, why are they selling computers to potential warez users, so they can install a pirated windows version, a pirated c4d version and a pirated version of my plugins and therefore compete with every other human on this earth. I see no point in this sorry. This is a legal issue that should be handled by the law not us legally hard working companies.
And in any case also here point 1 of universal facts I posted grabs again. If everybody on this planet decided to use a pirated version, nothing will stop them from cracking a software and using it as there is no 100% safety and everyone becomes a potential target for blaming. Can´t be the right way to argument.
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 08:38, xxxxxxxx wrote:
This is a fascinating discussion because it raises a fundamental point: why doesn't every user of C4D, or any other software for that matter, use a pirated version? To put it another way, why are so many users basically honest?
Legitimate users of C4D (which I'm just using as an example here - substitute any other software of choice) actually choose to pay for a license. Why do they do this? There are several possible reasons:
* fear of being found out and sued by Maxon (or more likely, named and shamed by legit users)
* concern that pirated versions may be incomplete or virus-infested
* desire to have the support, updates, etc. which you get with a valid license (very important IMO)
* the fact that someone using a pirated copy is less likely to get paid work
* recognition that if everyone used a pirate copy, soon there'd be no more Maxon and no more C4D
* and a general awareness that if someone produces something you want, you have to pay for it, unless they are giving it away
Someone who uses a cracked copy must ignore one or more of these points. It seems to me that such a person, having made the decision to use a knockoff copy is very unlikely to pay for a plugin and therefore will do whatever is necessary to obtain a cracked version. BUT such people will only make up a proportion of the userbase, and as we all know, they are most likely to be kids with huge collections of pirated software none of which they actually know how to use! How often have you seen someone in a forum say that they have Max, Maya, C4D, Softimage, and so on - did they really pay for those? Such people are not a competitive threat for the most part.
Since software protection cannot be made crackproof, we should leave it to Maxon to make C4D as pirate-safe as they feel necessary or possible, and stop worrying about it.
THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED
On 19/03/2010 at 12:17, xxxxxxxx wrote:
Originally posted by xxxxxxxx
hi,
just found that a c4d r11.5 keygen is on, so now anyone got solution for securing our work.Is there a way to make activation via the net like with adobe, or maybe is it possible to make hardware id and then the client send it to me so i will send him serial?
please, any advice.
I am working on big plugin package or maybe i will wait till R12 is on.thanks.
Im only posting because you mentioned a keygen for R11.5. Curiously I googled your username (good ol google) and find that you turn up in quite a few warez forums. Coincidence? Maybe, but if not I really think you are in the wrong place.