[music-dsp] interfering signal as "copy protection" ofdemoversion

[Ross Bencina]

> that means even if such a signal generator is hard coded without any  call 
> to other function, like timers whatever, directly in the  signalchain were 
> the framebuffer process calls are .. even the  someone experienced can 
> catch this and block it by jumping to the end ?

In principle. I guess it depends how amazing your plugin is as to whether 
they'd bother. But I was thinking if you have an "add noise" function then 
that's going to be pretty easy to  find (even by trial and error, skipping 
each function call in your process routine one at a time). I've never tried 
cracking anything, I only know from feedback that some things are easy to 
crack... a function call is definitely easy to patch.

I thought the suggestion of shipping the demo with missing features (not 
even linked in) is a good one.

>> Instead make it easy to buy, encourage non-crack  users to buy using 
>> pursuasive but not annoying techniques.
>
> persuasive ? what do you exactly mean with that ?

Well, for example, instead of just crippling the plugin you could ask the 
user if they want to buy it (with a popup screen at close time, a voice 
over, or whatever, there are many ways). Perhaps offer them an incentive to 
buy it... tell them what great stuff they're going to get that isn't in the 
demo. Positive reinforcement rather than negative (just make the damn noise 
go away). A lot of the other suggestions are pretty pursuasive...

I guess I'm just saying that there is a difference between crippling 
something so the user needs to buy it to use it, and crippling in a way that 
encourages people to buy it...


>> Use strong encryption techniques
>
> this is like, i am developer for dsp, maybe also web, but for sure  not 
> encryption specialist .. here in germany we would say. ..schuster  bleib' 
> bei deinen sohlen .. which means freely translated: actor  don't play 
> governor (even if you are green you are not hulk ;) ...

:-) hulks are out there, you can probably find one

R.