Microsoft, and many others. These organizations have undoubtedly been suf-
fering great losses due to software piracy, but these studies still seem a bit
tainted in the sense that they appear to ignore certain parameters that don’t
properly align with funding members’ interests. For example, in order to esti-
mate the magnitude of worldwide software piracy the study compares the
total number of PCs sold with the total number of software products installed.
This sounds like a good approach, but the study apparently ignores the factor
of free open-source software, which implies that any PC that runs free soft-
ware such as Linux or OpenOffice was considered “illegal” for the purpose of
the study.
Still, piracy remains a huge issue in the industry. Several years ago the only
way to illegally duplicate software was by making a physical copy using a
floppy diskette or some other physical medium. This situation has changed
radically with the advent of the Internet. The Internet allows for simple and
anonymous transfer of information in a way that makes piracy a living night-
mare for copyright owners. It is no longer necessary to find a friendly neigh-
bor who has a copy of your favorite software, or even to know such a person.
All you need nowadays is to run a quick search for “warez” on the Internet,
and you’ll find copies of most popular programs ready for downloading.
What’s really incredible about this is that most of the products out there were
originally released with some form of copy protection! There are just huge
numbers of crackers out there that are working tirelessly on cracking any rea-
sonably useful software as soon as it is released.
Defining the Problem
The technological battle against software piracy has been raging for many
years—longer than most of us care to remember. Case in point: Patents for
technologies that address software piracy issues were filed as early as 1977
(see the patents Computer Software Security Systemby Richard Johnstone and
Microprocessor for Executing Enciphered Programsby Robert M. Best [Johnstone,
Best]), and the well-known Bytemagazine dedicated an entire issue to soft-
ware piracy as early as May, 1981. Let’s define the problem: What is the objec-
tive of copy protection technologies and why is it so difficult to attain?
The basic objective of most copy protection technologies is to control the
way the protected software product is used. This can mean all kinds of differ-
ent things, depending on the specific license of the product being protected.
Some products are time limited and are designed to stop functioning as soon
as their time limit is exceeded. Others are nontransferable, meaning that they
can only be used by the person who originally purchased the software and that
the copy protection mechanism must try and enforce this restriction. Other
programs are transferable, but they must not be duplicated—the copy protec-
tion technology must try and prevent duplication of the software product.
Piracy and Copy Protection 311