

Ask HN: How do you control piracy of your products? - adidash

I am giving finishing touches to my first course for startups. I have invested lot of time and money into building the course material (videos, audios, pdfs, templates). I am concerned about the content being shared over forums and file sharing sites. Wanted to check with fellow HNers how you have monitored and controlled the piracy of your products.<p>Thanks!
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bromagosa
I'm both a programmer and a musician.

As a programmer I think bits are bits, they are meant to be replicated. I make
my software free (open) and charge for the service, not the product.

As a musician, pretty much the same thing. I make most of my earnings from
gigs. I see albums as marketing, a polished support for what you could get in
a digital form for free. Some people still prefer the physical form,
especially if you offer something more original than a classic plastic case
digipak. I'm actually genuinely happy when I see my albums shared in online
forums.

So my advice would be: provide a service valuable enough that users are
willing to pay for it even if they could find the contents somewhere else.

~~~
yeukhon
I like when you say "bits are bits"

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yeukhon
There is no way to stop it. I think you have to let that go. The amount of
money you put into defending your code will be a big loss in the end.

1\. Make your product pricing reasonable.

2\. Invest money into customer support.

3\. Take survey and reward users as often as possible.

4\. Ask users what they want and actually implement new features (in your case
cover the missing topics as quickly as possible.)

A good example is Django Best Practice. I am sure people are pirating that
book (and I have pirated other books before too). But I purchased that book
because I think the authors are very knowledgeable and they do very good
customer support.

People will come to you and buy your service if your contents are great. Give
up some content freely and make the rest profitable?

In the end some people will pirate and spread free stuff around.

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bowerbird
how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

-bowerbird

