HK> What are ways to protect your program from being copied (and used...)
HK> by someone else?
HK> I am thinking about reading the serial number of a floppy drive,
HK> and check this number as soon as the program is being started.
HK> (I agree, the floppy must be in the drive, it is not nice to the 
HK> user,but in my case, it is acceptable)
HK> Who knows how to read a serial number from a floppy ???
While copy protection has it's place, my opinion of it for the most part is 
that it is a royal pain for the user. It always causes problems in one of the 
following areas: Backup, Install or reinstall, deinstall. Depending on the 
scheme it can cause compatibility issues and/or other problems. Requiring 
your user to have the floppy in the drive would really be a pain because they 
might want to keep a data floppy in the drive for moving files between 
machines, doing data backups, etc. Many people I know will absolutely refuse 
to buy copy protected stuff. Most of the large companies abandoned it years 
ago. If you have some specialty software or niche product that really needs 
protected, the least obstrusive I have seen is the device that plugs into the 
printer port. Your software checks it for a serial number or something and 
wont run without it. Of course that could get expensive too and you'd have to 
add it to the cost of the software. 
Steve
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