Besides offline activation with a serial #, what else could I implement to better protect against piracy?

If I create a plugin, I probably would not be tempted to have a server running 24/7 so people could activate online. But I am just thinking about offline activation with a unique serial number.

A service like ilok is interesting but out of budget reach.

What other code could I implement into my plugin to better protect it from piracy ?

You can get some ideas from here.

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The best advice on this topic : don’t spend too much time on this topic. Anything more than a day spent “protecting” your software is time wasted (IMO).

I went for very relaxed demo restrictions (a nag screen after 3 weeks use) and not a hugely brilliant idea for the registration keys using RSA (I later discovered my private key bit length is so short that 1 or 2 hours with a decent GPU would easily brute force it), the idea being that people are going to pay or they aren’t, but making it “difficult” to trivially pirate the plugins will encourage the ones on the fence to buy them perhaps*.

So far I’ve only seen one product of my 4 cracked, and it’s an old version with fewer features, which leads to the other common theme in that KVR thread: keep adding features.

[*] I’ve read on a discord channel someone who was lamenting the time wasted clicking “OK” on the nag screen and that they needed to buy a license for my plugins, so my anecdata sample size of 1 “proves” this might actually work. :joy:

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Hmm, thanks for the input. I know the Reaper DAW for example simply has a 5 second count down on startup (after the trail period ends), but it is enough of a frustration for people to consider buying it.

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