How to stop pirates? Someone already nulled and pi

Question

I dont know what to say. About 3 days ago I released a script to the public. Today I realised, after searching on google that someone had already nulled (removed my protection) and pirated the script.

How do I stop users from pirating the script? It is written in PHP.

Please help or suggest some solutions.

Thank you for your time.

UPDATE By releasing to the public means that I have started selling it to users.

UPDATE My program is priced at only $49. Very reasonable for the functionality it offers. I do not understand how I should stop pirates from pirating my code. The replies which most people have given are rather sarcastic. I was hoping for some good advice. I know there is no silver-bullet. But some techniques which you have used in your PHP programs.

Answer 1

There's not much you can do.

Be flattered your work was deemed worth the effort!

Answer 2

There are several methods of handling this:

1. Offer your product as a service. This means finding appropriate hosting in the cloud, etc. This removes access to your code base, thus preventing direct piracy. Someone can still reverse engineer your stuff, but I'll touch on that later.
2. Add a unique identifier to each version of the script sold. This can be done automatically, and is great to do with obfuscated code (another, complementing method). This will give you the ability to track whoever pirated your code. If you can track them, you can sue them (or worse).
3. Pursue legal action. You'll need to know who leaked the code in the first place for this. Their PayPal information or even an IP address should be enough. You go to your lawyer, ask him to get a court order telling PayPal/ISP to release the identity of the thief, and then start tracking them down. If they're located overseas, your only real option is to freeze/appropriate funds from PayPal/credit card. Banks will be sympathetic only if they have a branch in your country (which can be targeted for legal action).
4. Ignore it, and simply build your business model around the support that you offer.

The sad fact is that information cannot be secured completely. There is no way to prevent a team of Indian programmers from reverse engineering your program. So you just have to be better than them, and constantly improve your product (this is "A Good Thing (TM)", so do it anyways)

Also keep in mind that DRM and other solutions are often controversial, and will reduce your sales (especially among early-adopters). On a personal level, I would suggest viewing this as a compliment. After all, your script was useful enough that someone bothered to pirate it within a week!

Answer 3

If your script won't consume a lot of bandwidth, you could keep your "logic" server-side, as samoz suggested, but if your users won't use it responsively ( a crawler, for example ), this could be trouble.

On the other side, you could become a ninja ...

Answer 4

I agree with Samoz's suggestion to keep the logic server side, however this can often be hard to do. The best strategy is to make the user want to buy it by offering updates automatically to registered users, as well as installation, advice and good support. You are never going to sway people hell bent on pirating, however your goal should be to persuade those who are undecided as to whether to pirate or purchase the script.

Any obfuscation/decryption technique for PHP can be cracked

Answer 5

Contact the pirate and let h{im,er} know that you will be forced to take legal action against them if they do not abide by the license.

Answer 6

I saw anti-piracy working once only. Quantel EditBox systems (a post-processing video solution), Hardware+Software+Internet solution against Piracy. Workstation only works after checking if the bank received the monthly rent. If not, workstation was locked. Funny days when this happens... (Funny days for me, no work at all... No funny day for the hacker.) Well, PHP is far away from hardware solutions... so I guess your only real choice is a server side protected against a tiny unsafe client pushing content, as pointed in some answer yet.