U-he Copy Protection/Licensing System Discussion

[Synthack]

.......

[Urs]

We don't need phone home or C/R.

[Teksonik]

It is going to be a keyfile. The keyfile stores the license holder's (chosen) name and email address, plus all serial numbers, the date of issue and a few watermarks to verify the legitimacy of the keyfile itself.

The format of the keyfile will be PNG, and when opened in a picture viewer, it'll look like a credit card, displaying the above name/email/date and a list of all the licensed products.

It's elegant. It's simple. It will look pretty.

(we're inspired by Plogue on this, who have been using "license cards" for years)

That works for me!

[ThomasLehmann]

for me too. Sounds good.

[tony10000]

Just curious...how will a keyfile stop piracy?

[EvilDragon]

u-he methods are well-known, have been discussed here, and have yielded a very good pirate-to-purchase conversion ratio. It's not just about the keyfile, it's about a bunch of other things in the code that punish pirate users that actually actively use the cracked plugin.

[tony10000]

u-he methods are well-known, have been discussed here, and have yielded a very good pirate-to-purchase conversion ratio. It's not just about the keyfile, it's about a bunch of other things in the code that punish pirate users that actually actively use the cracked plugin.

Yep, I know about those methods. I was just wondering why the felt the need to add a key file?

[EvilDragon]

They already have a keyfile, per product, which is created when you enter the serial when the plugin asks you for it. This is just simplifying it so that you don't have to do it per each product you own, it's all in one place. Simplification and improvement!

[Urs]

Just curious...how will a keyfile stop piracy?

Same as a serial number. Piracy is however not the issue we'd like to address with this.

The main issue these days is fraud. Bad people buy licenses, sell them on to unsuspecting people, claim money back via chargeback, rip us off and the person they sell to. Yet, with our serial number scheme, they get to keep the license.

Our concept for license cards will make the effort to do so a lot more tedious. As all licenses are stored on a single card, it's easy to imagine that people who rip us off once will have a much harder time keeping their illegal licenses, e.g. once they try this again.

Also, license transfers will be easier because we might be able to automate them.

Furthermore, one of the biggest problems for our support team is people who have multiple names and/or emails addresses for their purchases, often not remembering what was bought under which alias/address. The license card system will make this transparent and quickly fixable for our support team.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Furthermore, one of the biggest problems for our support team is people who have multiple names and/or emails addresses for their purchases, often not remembering what was bought under which alias/address. The license card system will make this transparent and quickly fixable for our support team.

I just did that on an Audiority purchase last week. I think my browser decided to autofill the email address and used my "other" one without me noticing. I can only imagine the support requests for this when you've got a giant customer base.

[tony10000]

Just curious...how will a keyfile stop piracy?

Same as a serial number. Piracy is however not the issue we'd like to address with this.

The main issue these days is fraud. Bad people buy licenses, sell them on to unsuspecting people, claim money back via chargeback, rip us off and the person they sell to. Yet, with our serial number scheme, they get to keep the license.

Our concept for license cards will make the effort to do so a lot more tedious. As all licenses are stored on a single card, it's easy to imagine that people who rip us off once will have a much harder time keeping their illegal licenses, e.g. once they try this again.

Also, license transfers will be easier because we might be able to automate them.

Furthermore, one of the biggest problems for our support team is people who have multiple names and/or emails addresses for their purchases, often not remembering what was bought under which alias/address. The license card system will make this transparent and quickly fixable for our support team.

Sounds like a great idea, then. I am already used to keyfiles so I have no issues with that system.

[Hanz Meyzer]

...But what for the effort? It will be cracked anyway. Why not slightly modify the current scheme? Would that have the same effect for you?

[Urs]

...But what for the effort? It will be cracked anyway. Why not slightly modify the current scheme? Would that have the same effect for you?

It *is* a slight modification of the current scheme. The serial number does not need to be typed down anymore, it's in a file. Part of it is that the serial is going to be longer, as it is essentially going to be created not just based on the user name but also the email address. Therefore, it would be very difficult to type down, and the license card is just more comfortable to use. It's hopefully reduce need for support and make life easier.

A third modification is that on top of the serial number there will be dozens of checksums embedded, each with their own salt, but only one of these checks is performed by any generation of products. Such that, if crackers find out which salt is used in the check embedded into, say, Hive 2.1, they won't know which check and salt we're using in Hive 2.2, such that even if they crack the license card for one product, the next update will invalidate it. And as the license card contains all licenses for all products, people will have to download a complete set of cracks, should they want to update a single plug-in.

I other words: A lot less work for us. A lot less work for our legit users. A lot more work for crackers, packers and downloaders.

[Urs]

Also, regarding the effort, I pretty much used all the methods we already have and flung them into a set of little scripts that spit out and read pretty looking license cards in less than 4 days. The most time of that weekend was wasted on HTML and stuff because I also made a fancy little Ajax gadget to try and test in-house.

It's not a major priority for us, we'll see when our team will have time to work on it. I expect a two year transition period where both methods will work in parallel until license cards take over.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Ok that sounds convincing