How to make Trial Plugins for 10 days

DabDab

@hisefilo said in How to make Trial Plugins for 10 days:

So..... If you were cracked.... You are in the right track... Trust me

I agree with @Natan and @hisefilo.
If R2R or whatever can crack big companies, they can not Hack them back? Or ruin the entity of Hackers or warez ? No, Big companies like the popularity or they have a solid rapport with the Crackers.
Image Line for example released 20.8.3 after few months it got cracked and they released 20.8.4 (which is un-cracked till now). ImageLine uses same .Reg file registration system. Then why 20.8.4 is not cracked? Because they are waiting for 20.8.5 version. When it will be released they will release 20.8.4 to the pirated world.
Imagine a company makes very good plugins (suddenly without his concern) if he gets hacked then his popularity to pirated users get increased. Lot of musicians only rely on cracked plugins. Even AVICII or Martin Garix used cracked one. For them new cracked plugins is a new name. It certainly boosts the recognition. Without crack Sylenth would have not been Sylenth same true for Nexus, Spire, Dune, Spectrasonics, Dune,NI etc.etc.

It is true R2R don't crack useless plugins. They only target good one.

DabDab

@hisefilo

I have to confess I uploaded my first ever made plugin to the torrent by myself

Are you checking seeding and P2P connection ? ;)

DabDab

@d-healey

If there is no lock there is nothing to unlock.

Then your product may come as Retail version or under Corporate License products ;)

d.healey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7N-JtQWGI

hisefilo

@d-healey where is the link for downloading it?? I need a copy

BWSounds

How I handle my plugins being cracked:

I check audioz(few other popular sites) if I see a big spike in traffic (seems everything starts here)
email them if my product is posted(they remove in 24-48hrs)
remove the links via the storage site(uploaded, rapid, etc.)
--This is important since most sites use the same links.
From my google dashboard remove all google searchable links
--So they dont appear on a google search.
I also check the storage links on all sites that popped up on google search and send DMCA to the pirated site as well.

Sometimes i'd have what seems like 50-150 sites to go through but only a hand full of them generating real visitors or using unique storage links.

in my case I always seen a boost in sales, but after about 3-5 days all links are down and no longer showing up on google.

I also use tags like free download, free cracked plugin etc. on my site so when ppl do search for cracked versions my official site always pops up.

UD AUDIO

To me it is free promo. Just imagine someone does see a link to a pirated version and he goes to your site to buy it because of trust etc.
What do you think about donationware as solution? I think any digital product should be donationware but maybe it's not the best way.

Natan

@UD-AUDIO "Donation Ware" and "PayWhat you Want"
Both sounds Cheap To me.
Release it As Free For X Hours Or Release it As Upsell I Mean Buy One And get This/That Free.

d.healey

@UD-AUDIO said in How to make Trial Plugins for 10 days:

Just imagine someone does see a link to a pirated version and he goes to your site to buy it because of trust

Doesn't generally happen. If someone is going to buy it they wouldn't be browsing a "pirate" site. Customers and copyright infringers are seldom the same individuals.

What do you think about donationware as solution?

A solution to what? How would this help?

I think any digital product should be donationware

Why?

Natan

@d-healey said in How to make Trial Plugins for 10 days:

@UD-AUDIO said in [How to make Trial Plugins for 10 > > I think any digital product should be donationware

Why?

That Sounds Like A Charity

UD AUDIO

@d-healey I am in telegram groups and discord servers where many people are sharing links to pirate version.
I don't click those links but sometimes it tells me there is something new.

Just want to know what you think about donationware in terms of plugins.

UD AUDIO

@d-healey I think any digital product should be donationware because anyone can use it and more people would use it in my theory. I know that a lot of people wouldn't donate and some might think it's crap because quality must be expensive. This might not pay all your bills but I think it's not a bad system.
I don't make plugins only for people who can afford it. And the worst system to me is the subscription model like "output arcade". I never would pay for that.

In my opinion, money blocks human evolution because of how knowledge is shared and how it could be shared.. So I would make anything free but we have to pay bills etc so donations are a compromise.

...Oh what I mean is pay-what-you-want, not donations!

UD AUDIO

@natan You say it sounds cheap to you. But what if I make pay-what-you-want software with a $ 1000+ button? :P

Lindon

OK so after some investigation and thinking its clear there is only one(unless anyone else can think of one) system that generally defeats the pirates, and that utilizes both server calls and as part of those calls a public key system of one sort or another.

So I would like to propose HISE adopts one or other of the public key systems, that is also implemented in most common server languages.

Here is how it think it would work:

-- The plugin starts and requests (or reads from disk) the user ID...
-- the plugin calls the server with the following details:
--- User ID (email address)
--- plugin ID
--- Machine ID
--- challenge key

So here the challenge key is a simple past of a challenge /response pair(there could be say 500 in the plugin that it can choose from), it doesn't matter is these are "publicly known" as we will see...these are only really used to vary the messages being returned.

The server checks the user ID and plugin ID to make sure its a valid user...
It checks the frequency of calls about this plug-in and user ID (if too many too often then it invalidates the account - the man-in-the-middle defence)
if the Machine ID is not one of (say) 5 held for the customer then it invalidates the plug-in

if the plugin is valid it looks up the response for the challenge it has received.

The plugin forms a return message:
--- plugin status
--- response code

The server encrypts the return message using its private key... and sends the plugin the message

The plugin decrypts the return message using the public key (ensuring its not from a fake server) and acts accordingly...

Anyone think of a way around this? Or a better way of doing it?

ustk

@lindon Unless I'm wrong, I can think of a way to crack it... In the end, it is an if statement that will allow or block the plugin. A simple patch, and done... It will prevent from keygen, but when keygens aren't possible they generally go to a patching solution. But correct me if I'm wrong

Christoph Hart

@Lindon: You can implement this scheme in HiseScript but as @ustk said, as soon as somebody reverse engineers the binary, you have lost (and having a hardcoded copy protection scheme in HISE will not add more security).

lalalandsynth

Why not just a 10 day free trial , then a small nag screen prompting the user to buy , while the user can still close the nag and keep using the plugin?
Not sure they would bother cracking a "free" plugin.

Seems to work for Reaper.

Lindon

@christoph-hart said in How to make Trial Plugins for 10 days:

@Lindon: You can implement this scheme in HiseScript but as @ustk said, as soon as somebody reverse engineers the binary, you have lost (and having a hardcoded copy protection scheme in HISE will not add more security).

Im not sure I understand how they can do this...even if they can "read" the source code - but cant alter it....the plugin sends a message somewhere and gets a public key encrypted message back - which they cant really crack - then it acts on it, explain to me what i'm missing here..

ustk

@lalalandsynth But not sure either they would buy it :)

Christoph Hart

@Lindon It doesn't really matter how you communicate with your server and what safe checks you encorporate to make it harder to simulate a legit license. At some point you have to ask

if(isUnlocked())
{
    // proceed as usual
}

And this is usually where the crackers come in and change the function to always return true.

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