OK, with all this talk about Poser and copy protection, let's turn the tables a little bit ... Lets say you have an idea for a software program that is totally unique and unlike anything else on the market. So you pull a team of, say, 20-25 people together to develop it. You figure it will take two years to put it together, so you get some funding to pay your employees, buy their hardware and software, rent an office and office furniture, pay the utilities, and all that stuff. Two years go by, and the product is beta tested with rave reviews. Youre ready for release. Time to pay printers to print up the manuals, and pay to produce CDs for mass distribution. Now, youll have to hire more people to provide tech support and customer service while the developers start working on the next release or updates. After all, you want to stay in business so you can support the customers you hope youll get by selling your nifty software product. So you set your price. You figure in order to break even with the costs youve already mounted, and projecting that you want to stay in business for at least a couple of years (with some additional growth for support, marketing, and additional developers), you have to sell, say, 50,000 copies of the software. In order to sell that many, you have to get distributors (who mark it up) to push it out to retail stores (who also mark it up). Now your product is on the market. During the first couple of weeks, 10,000 people buy the software. Not bad!! 20% of the sales you hoped to make in the first couple of weeks! But then BOOOMMMM!!!!! Sales drop suddenly you find out that the product you worked so hard on has been posted on warez boards, and people are getting it for free. You still have 40,000 copies to sell to break even, support your growing customer base, and develop the next release. What would YOU do? Denise

Denise I would do exactly what Curious Labs and other software vendors do. More security. Ron

I guess it comes down to a matter of "would those using the warez have bought the software in the first place?" There was several news items on this very topic a several months back. the general consensus was that you can't lose what you don't have. Many software companies admitted that they weren't losing much revenue because those who were using the warezz couldn't afford the software and/or would never have bought it at those prices anyhow. Sure there were several companies screaming about the loss of revenues. But I pesonally don't believe you lose what you will never have. A person witht eh money to spend on this software doesn't waste their time looking for warez. Out of curiosity today I tried to find a warez site with Poser pro pack, because I keep hearing how it is just all over the place and available, that it is the reason for this need for protection. Well, after over an hour I found only 3 downloads of poser and no downloads of ppp. Of course just to find those I was deluged with pop-ups and vote for me's and porn windows. Never did see an actual download file, just that they had it there.... somewhere. But it crashed my system.... So if the files were actually there, who knows. Maybe I don't know how to search for warez, but I ran it through Asta la vista and then through search engines. So either CL has been quite successful at shutting down hackers or it's just not as big a download as I've heard. There were tons of sites offering Bryce and Photoshop though, those downloads I did see. Still don't understand why these sites are allowed to remain operational...

That should have read "there were" but my mind was running ahead of my fingers again.

Here's another table turning. Do you really want the warez SoBs who pirate Poser or Poser Pro Pack as customers? I agree with the above that you REALLY need to ask a) Would they really have bought it? Probably not. b) Do you really want thieves as your customers? Hopefully not.

Hummmm, they didn't develop the product on their own, it was already an established product. They just "improved" it. I'm not saying that they shouldn't copy protect it. I'm just saying that there are other ways to do it that would make it secure. I wouldn't have a problem even with this copy protection if CL can assure it's customer base that if in fact they do go out of business, they will put in place some kind of patch that they would then send out or make available to their customers that would negate the need for the online registration. THAT is the main problem that I see with this, and most of the notes people have written reflect that concern. If it were my company, I would put that into effect to assure my customers that I care about them enough to write the code that will make them comfortable. I don't think CL will go out of business any time soon, but there are a lot of companies out there "on the blocks" so to speak, and I'm sure they didn't plan it that way. Curious Labs, please give us some assurance that you will provide us with a fix on the chance that you will have problems down the line but will still take care of us. All I've seen so far is an uncaring attitude. It is in place and that is the end of it. Kind of like saying don't like it? Bugger off. Don't buy it. Marque

Gee, I don't know- I sell software too, and while I'm sure there there are many warez copies of my stuff out there I can't see any effect on sales. I wouldn't have any way of figuring that out anyway. I wouldn't equate a warez copy as a lost sale, I would equate it to a dishonest person. I wonder how Curious Labs figures out their losses- maybe there is some kind of survey of Warez users?

Attached Link: http://www.3dark.com/cgi-bin/vote/vote.pl?name=piracypoll&action=view

Actually, there is a survey, and it's quite interesting to read (though I don't know how accurate) Check out the attached link.

Now this scenario is worrying for the future of Poser: If after the security patch is released, a crack is found on warez sites, then we can all say goodbye to Poser. Why? Well, not only would CL have not stopped the potential loss of sales from warez, but they would also have lost paying, licence abiding customers who did not agree with the security patch in the first place. In other words CL will be in a worse position than if they hadn't gone the software dongle route. Cheers

The scenario I proposed to start this thread off was not meant to be a direct comparison to CL ... it was something I made up to show the other side of the coin, in hopes that we could discuss solutions without dragging any specific application into the scenario. To reduce the impact that the above scenario describes, there are two immediate solutions that are apparent ... (1) implement some sort of piracy protection that makes it a bit more difficult for pirates to do their thing, and (2) actively battle against the warez sites. There is, of course, another alternative that would be even less appealing to the user base. Increase the price. Personally, I'd rather have the auth code. 8-) It has been mentioned in other threads that there are other 3D applications that use similar copy protection schemes. Hardware and software locks haven't stopped loyal users from purchasing and upgrading those programs, as some sort of copy protection has been "standard fare" for them for quite some time. Hopefully, CL has enough loyal users that they will pull through. I believe they do. And, as others have mentioned, software protection is becoming more prevalent in the latest releases of many software programs, including those geared toward the average consumer. A fad or a trend? I doubt it ... but having to obtain an authorization code is a much more "user friendly" choice than having to pay more. Denise

Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com

Great posts but I need to make one comment. Marque, We did develop this from the get go. The original creator, Larry Weinberg is our CEO. Steve Cooper came on just as Poser 3 started development and was instrumental in the look and feel of what Poser is today, and it's success. Seath Ahrens is our VP of development and has been writing code since the start of Poser 2. You can find their bios on our website. I have been working on Poser since early in the Poser 2 dev cycle as has Joe "Grova" who most of you have had contact with, and there's a few other lifers in QA, customer service, tech support, and so on. I'm not sure where you're seeing the uncaring attitude or from whom at CL. I'd certainly like to know. I can assure you that we will continually provide you with fixes. I would have liked to have this updater out in Feb, but we had to switch gears a bit after the release. We'll continually attempt to improve our turn around time. Thanks **************************** Steve Yatson Product Manager Curious Labs Http://www.curiouslabs.com ****************************

Who is Mowgli Windos whose name appears among other names on Poser 3's startup sequence?

I'm not sure what the answer to the warez dilema is. If I did, I'd probably be on my way to becoming rich. However, after debating the issue here for a while, my final thoughts on the matter are this. 1. If this security code thing is used, that is fine with me, provided: a - it is only needed once, b - that if CL goes under, a patch or code is given to unlock the program for good, c - that getting the security code is easy and not a pain to consumers. 2. Hardware dongles are a pain in the ass. I'd rather not see that way used, as it has also proved uneffective. (cracked dongle files) Dragontales

What happens if the user hasn't got internet access, so he must phone or snail-mail CL across the Atlantic or Pacific for his authorization code, and he is Spanish-speaking or French or German or Japanese and doesn't know English well?

Denise- The survey is rather enlightening, I highly reccomend all readers of this thread look at it. Not that I'd trust the warez users to tell the truth, though ;-)

Steve, Although you were instramental in the development, I was under the impression that another company Metacreations did the funding for the creation of Poser. So what I was alluding to is that Poser wasn't created by Curious Labs, although the original creators may be there now, the money came from elsewhere, so you are not creating a new product from Curious Labs, (and thus spending a ton of money on a new product that no one knows about), you are improving an existing product that was created elsewhere. You really don't need to convince anyone that Poser is a great product, you already have an exsisting and loyal user base. Your new product is the Pro Pack, the addon for the original. See the point I was making? Unless the original creators of Poser put up the money or actually owned Metacreations, then you are in fact improving, not creating. Let's face it...as long as it's a major coup for these groups to crack these programs, and they do compete to get them out first...there isn't going to be a way to protect your software. As I said before Steve, if you will just let us know that you will implement a patch for us in case something happens to CL, then I would be satisfied. Again I mention the 3Dexplorer that was supposed to be a lifetime registration, yet the program was sold to Right Hemisphere, and although we registered users got one upgrade free, from here on out we pay. In real life shit happens. I don't blame the company for selling out, I blame them for making a promise they couldn't keep. Thanks for the time. I need to get back to work. Marque

Marque, MetaCreations was formed by the merging of MetaTools and Fractal Design. At that time, Poser was a Fractal Design product (didn't you say you had every version?). The heart of Poser was created by Larry Weinberg, who is still on the team. The current crew had to purchase Poser from MetaCreations as a going concern. I doubt it was particularly cheap. Curious Labs definitely had big setup costs.

I completely, absolutely, and utterly disagree. :)But I do see where your coming from. Here's my POV for what it's worth. We created Poser. Not the people that paid us to do so. We all suffered through merger after merger and one bad corporate decision after another. Constantly fighting for dev resources and money. The corporation has almost nothing to do with the product itself. We always fought against the fact that at Meta, Poser was just another of the 26, HSC, Meta, RayDream, Specular, Fractal, so called "family" of products. We put up more than money, we put up our time. I don't get paid extra if I'm up until 3 in the morning answering Poser related questions. It was sooo nice to be able to finally add features we wanted, without resistance, for example, we never did a Carrara plugin due to red tape. Never could have done a Max or LW hosting plugin at Meta due to competition. But we jumped on those lightning quick as CL. And you'll see more. We felt that Pro Pack was the best way to do this because not everyone wanted or needed these features. They were the most requested but we wanted to sperate this to give existing users and potential customers a choice. Most of our users don't own Max or LW or even do animation. But if you want 4 pane views and a setup room the option is there also. I have already stated elsewhere on this forum, and we will publicly state on our Web Site that if something happens to CL we will post a free updater to eliminate the copy protection. Thanks again for your posts. **************************** Steve Yatson Product Manager Curious Labs Http://www.curiouslabs.com ****************************

I am going to assume that this protection scheme writes its information to the MBR of the hard drive. How are virus scanners that see such a write as a virus attack going to affect it?

Pirating does incure other costs besides just lost sales. For example, if I have a pirated PPP and CL does not track serial numbers that well, I can call their tech support and get help on their dime. For products that are lead ins to online community stuff, this is a huge problem. I think CL has the right to protect their stuff. What I don't like is the idea of the checks on PPP. Putting these checks in a patch that's supposed to fix major problems is just wrong. Do that on Poser 5 instead. And I guarentee crackers will get around your security so saying CD keys are less effective than online keys is a little silly. Security is not about preventing theft, its about make theft inconvienent enough without hindering your loyal customers that only a small percentage of people can use the product.

I know about all these losses. If this copy protection could be relied on to stop piracy. But it won't, when some teenage hacker has made a hacked version that doesn't need the code or a dongle. Apple tried copy protection long ago when the Apple ][ was the latest thing out and desktops didn't have even DOS or equivalent but ran in BIOS, and it didn't work then. It is like being a sheep farmer in the mountains in north Wales: each spring the foxes are going to take a proportion of your young lambs, whetever you try to do about it, and that is the way of the world as long as foxes and technology are as they are now.

The way the other hardened copy protection schemes I have seen work is that they determine a set of parameters that likely vary on every machine. They then hash them to together to produce a signature. Each signature then has a complementary unlock key that can be generated by some sort of crypological process that will tell the program that it is valid. The program then looks for the unlock key at startup or it doesn't work. The unlock code is either a text file or written into the executable directly. It doesn't need to be a hidden file, as it only works on the machine it is set up for. The trick to making this work is finding unique enough parameters and preventing people from patching around the cross-check, which you do by having a bunch of sanity checks in various places to detect altered security code. Steve Cooper has suggested it is somehow locked to the machines hard drive in some fashion. Which could be by doing something like querying the OS for the manufacture ID and serial number of the HDA. Bypassing this would either require that you install a patched disk driver (yeah, bet on OS stability and your personal security after you install a device driver written by a cracker.) or editing the program to eliminate the security checks, which should be very difficult if it is correctly written.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=280357

*The unlock code is either a text file or ...* Max 4 was likely as secure, and it came out in January and it has been cracked. Information from message 25 in the thread at this link. The stronger the fortress it, the more the crackers will go after it, same as hunters going for the most dangerous bull or the heaviest tusker in the herd instead of choosing an easy prey.

Someone wrote about a software lock checking for configuration tio make sure that it is in the same computer. Waat happens if the user runs a laptop sometimes with and sometimes without an external zipdrive that plugs into the parallel port?

I would expect that it would look at the boot drive. Enviroments where you use removable HDs as the boot drive are not typically places you use poser, as these seem to be mostly places where they lock the HD in safe every night.

My laptop's drive letters are if the zipdrive was plugged in to the parallel port at bootup then A: floppy, C: hard, D: zipdrive, E: CD-ROM else A: floppy, C: hard, D: CD-ROM . That looks like two different configurations to me.

Anthony, you make a good point. CL have also mentioned that re-partitioning your drive will not effect the code, but if I re-partition my drive to add a new partition, then the drive configuration changes also. I'm sure CL have looked into this...well I hope they have. Cheers