

How I converted a software thief into a customer - tghw
https://www.blurity.com/blog/2012/07/17/how-i-converted-a-software-thief-into-a-customer/

======
iamdann
The popup you wrote had a humanizing effect. It's not just a faceless piece of
software anymore. It's a a genuinely nice guy who built a cool product and
wants to get paid.

As a concept, people _know_ that there's a real person behind every
application. But it's not until moments like these when they're actually
confronted with that person. Much less offered a deal for trying to rip them
off.

~~~
vacri
It may also have had an 'oh my god, I've been caught!' effect - no longer is
the _user_ anonymous, in their own eyes.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes

I expected "something nicer" maybe not using the word "stealing"

Still, my paranoid side thought of something:

"Oh, they're giving away this code so we give them our contact info, then they
know who pirated the software"

------
TomGullen
I don't like this approach.

Earlier this year saw some referrals from a hacking forum from a young
gentleman petitioning the cracking community to crack our software for him:
<http://www.hackforums.net//showthread.php?tid=2148782> (You may have to
register to view the thread)

I engaged in conversation with that community briefly and told them a little
about us, and asked them what was unfair about our pricing and if they had any
better ideas for us.

The response was extremely positive and supportive, and we received some
emails with helpful advice about how to protect our program from crackers like
themselves.

I've no idea if we got any more sales than we would of otherwise, but we
engaged with a community in a respectful manner and it's likely we delayed
cracked versions of our software being made freely available.

The problem I see with the OP's method is firstly I would be peeved if I was a
legitimate customer and interpreted this post as rewarding bad behaviour.

Secondly as OP has publicly posted this he might actually lose revenue from
future customers purposefully entering wrong keys to gain access to the coupon
code. If OP redacts this now, customers might be annoyed by this and ask for
discounts, or even find alternatives. So it's quite short sighted to post this
in my opinion.

Thirdly and possibly most importantly is that it's boiling the company-
customer relationship down into a purely financial one. A relationship with a
potential customer (no matter what their software ethics are) should be more
than that, and it can have unexpected rewards like we experienced.

The message in the OP is disrespectful as well, it's highly accusing (is there
any risk legitimate customers could see this?). It's my opinion that these
sorts of tactics don't do your company and favours in the long term, although
in the short term you might collect a handful more dollars.

~~~
tghw
See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4258035> for the way this is
activated. It only shows it if someone has already made it clear they're
trying to not pay for the software.

~~~
TomGullen
Assuming there's no risk legitimate customers will see this message, it's
still a short sighted tactic in my opinion.

For an extra $29 in the bank, you've risked alienating your other customers,
and could even lose revenue going into the future - mainly because you posted
it on your company blog which I'm sure is read by a lot of your legitimate
customers.

It's a precarious position because the $29 isn't much upside at all and can
easily be negated by one single customer who reads this post and finds an
alternative.

I understand that you feel celebratory about this, but it would be fair to
assume that some of your customers will not feel the same way about it.

------
sharkweek
Notch, of Minecraft fame, is well known for these types of shenanigans, even
shaming a Minecraft pirate in a Quake 3 match
([http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120412/07474418467/friend...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120412/07474418467/friendly-
pirate-challenges-minecraft-creator-to-quake-3-battle.shtml))

Not sure it's scalable, but sure makes for a fun alternative to perpetual
legal battles

~~~
exDM69
Some indie game producers release on piratebay right from day zero. Usually
with some kind of easter egg version, e.g. all in-game characters have a
pirate hat, no other hats are available like in a legitimate version. This
makes sure that no-one pirates a badly cracked buggy version and gets a bad
experience and decides not to buy the game.

Thankfully free demos are coming back so it is easier to test a game legally
before making the decision on the purchase.

~~~
shasta
But then are pirates still in violation of copyright law?

~~~
gosu
Also: should the developers be in violation? I imagine it's a little like
(sorry) kiddie porn, where, even if you're the kiddie, society doesn't want
you supporting a community that it considers to be negative.

~~~
derleth
> should the developers be in violation?

Legally? No, copyright law doesn't work that way. The people who own the
copyright to a given work have an absolute right to give away the rights
copyright law gives them, to conditionally give them away, to sell them, or to
share them with others.

Morally? Of course not. We must fight tooth and nail to prevent copyright laws
from becoming that insane.

~~~
einhverfr
Depending on jurisdiction, though. In some jurisdiction authors cannot give up
some rights, such as the right to attribution, in theory at least.

In practice, what are they going to do? Ban publishing things anonymously on
the basis you are violating your own moral rights?

~~~
derleth
> Depending on jurisdiction, though. In some jurisdiction authors cannot give
> up some rights, such as the right to attribution, in theory at least.

Entirely correct. My post was based on American copyright law, which has no
concept of moral rights.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Well USA are signatories to Berne Convent
(<http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?treaty_id=15>) which
includes moral rights in Article 6 _bis_.

FWIW TRIPs includes an element of moral rights in Art.s 13/14 but specifically
disclaims the inclusion of every right in Berne Art.6.

It would be interesting to know why the US dont want to allow people the right
to be named as author of their own work? (and if they led the exclusion in
TRIPs).

~~~
derleth
> It would be interesting to know why the US dont want to allow people the
> right to be named as author of their own work?

You can have that right if you negotiate for it in a contract or make it a
condition of the license you release the work under.

The more interesting question is why other countries want there to be rights
granted by law that authors cannot give up.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is that a French thing - IP rights that can't be given up?

Moral rights to me are embodied in the right to be named as author of your
works. And I can't see why you'd want to allow that to be taken away, eg in a
contract of work, against the authors wishes. Where's the benefit in
stimulating creative expression or for the public domain?

Generally USA has rights that can't be given up; though you can chose not to
exercise some of them. For example you can't sell yourself in to slavery
AFAICT (or at least it wouldn't be lawful to be bought which in practical
terms is equivalent).

------
cheeze
Somewhat related, when I was younger I had no money and didn't have much of a
problem pirating software (times have changed and I realize how stupid that
is). I tried to pirate a piece of software and upon entering a fake key got a
popup similar to yours. Basically, it said "I'm not able to stop you from
pirating this software, I'm not even going to disable activation for your
clearly invalid key. Just remember that I'm not some huge corporation, I'm a
family man trying to support my wife and kids (with a link to picture of his
beautiful children). Consider buying this to help keep me afloat and to ensure
continued development."

It hit me hard, made me realize that it isn't a victimless crime and that I
was literally depriving this guy of what he deserves, payment for his hard
work. Definitely one of the leading factors that caused me to stop piracy
altogether. Even pirates have a heart, and by humanizing the product, it is
way harder to steal it and feel okay about it.

~~~
belorn
While sounding fine, its a form of error in reasoning - A fallacy of a kind.
The logic does not scale. If I go to the supermarket and buy cheap imported
goods, I deprive the local market of the possible purchase of their goods. It
is very easy, almost impossible, not to deprive someone of payment if payment
is based on who has worked hard and what could have happened.

The logic also demand that there is a zero sum game going where every copy
equals a lost sale. Copying is as about as simple as needing. If needing
results in lost sales, then each time I am hungry, I create lost sales for
restaurants if I dont buy something immediately. That might also sound fine
logically, as if I am hungry I will buy food, and if I didnt need to buy said
food, I am depriving someone of payments for their hard work to create food I
could have eaten. It is also crazy! the world is not a zero sum world. It is
way more complicated and social economics (how should creative people get
payed for their work) should be decided by economics and politics, not law.

~~~
quesera
Just because something doesn't scale into the macro doesn't mean it can't be
true and relevant in the micro.

Also, you've extrapolated from "non-zero sum, not all equations balance" into
"there is no math", which makes your argument more fallacious than that to
which you were responding.

~~~
Karunamon
>Just because something doesn't scale into the macro doesn't mean it can't be
true and relevant in the micro.

Call me extremist but, I don't agree with this. There's no deprivation
happening. It's a crappy thing to do, no doubt, but I can't see any analogy to
the 'lost sale' meme tossed around by the various *AA groups that doesn't
break down immediately upon any kind of scrutiny.

On another note, I pretty much winced every time the author said "steal". Can
we all agree to stop doing this? It's wrong, we know it's wrong, we chide the
AA's for this every time they do it, and it's just the same when anyone else
does either, going back to one simple fact: nothing has been stolen.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
The hand-wringing over 'steal' that crops up in these threads is hilarious. If
the whole piracy thing was as logically tight as the armchair economists would
like you to believe, then the misappropriation of terms would not be so
offensive. It'd be merely annoying. Instead, we often find vast treatises on
semantics.

I'm not saying you pirate (that's your business), more observing the
disconnect between the argument ("it doesn't hurt anyone") and the tone ("but
DON'T call it stealing!!")

~~~
ralfn
I like the word "pirate". Everybody understands its meaning. Its not confused
with the unlawfull appropiation of somebody's property ( stealing ), but it
does have a negative connotation.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Was that supposed to be a joke? Piracy is robbery at sea - ie stealing by
force using a boat.

It's like calling bullying 'murder'.

~~~
Karunamon
Check a recent dictionary. Take it up with Princeton if you don't like the
definition:

* (pirate) copy illegally; of published material

* (pirate) someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation

* (pirate) commandeer: take arbitrarily or by force; "The Cubans commandeered the plane and flew it to Miami"

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The parents point was that it is not confused with 'stealing' though. Whilst,
as you and I both noted it in fact means stealing (well robbing).

Copyright infringement is just that, or 'unlawful copying' if you're afraid of
longer words.

~~~
Karunamon
Except it also means, as per pretty much every dictionary, to copy unlawfully.
The same cannot be said of theft/stealing.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So if a headline refers to, let's say, 'Somali pirates' you disavow any
confusion in the scope of activity in which the subjects are engaged?

~~~
Karunamon
In which case you rely on the context (you know, like you have to do with
every other ambiguity in English ^^)

Considering how often Somalian criminals have been hijacking ships, and how
this has been covered on pretty much every media form, I don't think there
will be any confusion on this matter anytime soon.

Also, the verb form (Someone is pirating something) is in my experience almost
exclusively used for copyright infringement. I've never heard of pirates
pirating a shipment, but I've heard plenty of pirates pirating music.

------
bri3d
I've seen quite a few instances of string resources like "I need this money to
feed my family," or more humorous "so you think you're leet, do you?"-type
phrases placed near easily-defeated serial validation code in binaries.

A lot of the funnier strings convinced me to give money to the authors of
software I'd never have purchased or used to start with (I used to download a
lot of shareware just to explore its copy protection).

Famously, Mac OS X also contains the "Don't Steal Mac OS X" poem mapped into
virtual address space by DSMOS.kext.

The people cracking/pirating software are just as human as the authors - any
kind of communication at a personal level increases the chance of a sale IMO.

~~~
DanBC
It's not as much fun if they do something that can trash data of innocent
users. "The tree of evil bears bitter fruit" -

([http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eo4Otm_TcW8C&pg=PT509...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eo4Otm_TcW8C&pg=PT509&lpg=PT509&dq=%22tree+of+evil+bears+bitter+fruit%22&source=bl&ots=gzHJyN7x9b&sig=AUBPUFoxB_mBGrKQmw_G-
hcl0vQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jQIGULaKAsqF4gS09IzHCQ&ved=0CJkCEOgBMAQ#v=onepage&q=%22tree%20of%20evil%20bears%20bitter%20fruit%22&f=false))

If the software thought you were running it under a debugger it would try to
trash the disk. Unfortunately several errors made the software think it was
running under a debugger even if it wasn't, and a few people lost data.

~~~
Karunamon
I'd imagine doing something like this nowadays would result in litigation.
There are stories of older apps doing all kinds of unsavory shenanigans:
(<http://www.geocities.ws/johnboy_tutorials/bt.html>) (yes, that IS a
geocities link)

Some as benign as popping a "gotcha" message like the author here, some as
evil as nuking the registry or boot sector. The armchair lawyer in me wonders
what would happen if someone who had their drive trashed by gotcha code like
this initiated legal action.

------
droithomme
Very nice anecdote. There's a lot of controversy on how to handle piracy and
piracy attempts. Many developers and companies get angry and create police-
state quality authoritarian solutions that punish their legitimate users.
Obviously from the way I express it I feel this is not the best response. We
draw the line at providing hand holding customer support to pirates, but we do
gratefully accept well formed bug reports from them, without judgement. Being
polite but firm and reasonable sometimes results in a conversion.

------
waqf
But what was the origin of the invalid numbers? That's the teaser _I_ kept
reading for ...

~~~
dmn001
There more info here: <http://www.keacher.com/1060/how-i-got-to-my-first-
sale/>

The first result for "blurity serial number" points to
<https://www.trademarkia.com/blurity-77870929.html>

Edit: Entering the serial number does indeed produce the easter egg dialog,
with a coupon code that still works. BTW, there is a typo on the buy page
'regsitration'.

~~~
teuobk
We have a winner!

After I discovered people were doing that, I was rather surprised that they
thought that the trademark serial number would be a valid registration key. I
guess people don't read.

Edit: Thanks for the heads-up about the typo. Oops!

~~~
guscost
Mind the sampling method, it only suggests that _software pirates_ don't read
;)

------
gradstudent
Interesting tidbit: > I couldn’t figure out where those numbers were coming
from. The people trying the invalid numbers seemed to have nothing in common,
and my Google-fu failed me.

You seem to suggest here you track user information to such a degree that you
can Google for the individuals in question. That's creepy as hell!

I think you've scared me away from your software forever.

~~~
nyellin
Actually, I assumed he tried Googling the invalid numbers. And logging browser
+ geographic information in error handlers is standard practice.

~~~
gradstudent
"Standard practice" for whom? The CIA? Gah! The very idea that some bit of
desktop software needs to surreptitiously phone home in the event of an error
really rubs me the wrong way. Not only is it wholly unnecessary but it's also
a serious intrusion of privacy.

OP: does your software tell people up front (i.e. not hidden in some 10 page
EULA) it's going to phone home? Do you allow them to opt out? If there is an
option, what's the default?

~~~
tghw
To make this assertion also makes it clear that you probably haven't worked on
much desktop software distributed to a large number of users. There are so
many different configurations that the only real way to figure out why it
isn't working for a particular user is to have it phone home with a stack
trace and basic system info. Otherwise, pretty much every bug would not be
reproducible.

If you don't like your software doing that (and, believe me, most of it does),
then lock down your firewall and only let a whitelist of programs communicate
with the outside world. A lot of your software will stop working, but at least
you'll know that no information (well, not none, just less) is getting sent
out to various servers.

~~~
gradstudent
Let me see if I have this right: instead of asking nicely for permission to
send your errors and crash reports you want your users to setup a firewall and
prevent your program from phoning home. What a dick move.

It shows you care not a whit for your customers' privacy or consent; only the
data on their computers which, for some bizarre reason, you feel entitled to.

~~~
tghw
I've stated elsewhere in this thread, I don't write Blurity. It seems that you
so want someone to attack for perceived violations of user privacy that you
haven't even stopped to consider who you're attacking.

As I said before, most desktop software phones home. In fact, by necessity,
any software that auto updates and most software that requires registration
phones home. Thinking otherwise is just naive.

------
activepeanut
Isn't this incentivising people to pirate before buying a legitimate license?

~~~
belorn
Let say that 5 out of 10 000 users triggered this. Then say that 2 out of
those 5 would have bought a full copy but read/heard/noticed this method of
getting a cheaper copy. Is that then a problem?

My guess is that the time this guy spent on this info box and coupon code far
exceed the money from one license.

~~~
GoodIntentions
I suspect the page views he got from this story was well worth it.

------
petitmiam
I wonder if the customer will now share the coupon code.

~~~
0x0
I'd be wary of including a "coupon code" that identifies myself as a potential
"software pirate" when purchasing something using my name and visa card
online, even if the seller has the best intentions.

~~~
MysticFear
Use Paypal

------
jamiecurle
Regardless of the comments about how negative this is I commend your
transparency and creativity.

