Leslie said:
If you ignore the online/only -- let it still phone home. You already have a hardware key in the interface device to either XM or Sirus Radio.
Almost Les. There's still people buying the original XM PCR off of eBay, another hardware vendor that has an almost identical (or identical) interface product and a serial cable interface (no box) that does the same function with the XM Direct/Sirius Direct.
As near as I can tell, the other two hardware vendors distribute trial copies of TimeTrax Recast with their hardware.
If these folks only sold their software to those who bought their interface, they'd be eliminating potential customers.
Unless there's a way of cloning XM radio IDs (and I have no clue if it's feasible) that's a hardware solution. But then again, if they key is encrypted to the radio id, that can still be cracked. The only protection scheme that can't be cracked is to never let your software out of your hands. Any other system can be cracked given sufficient interest, time and resources.
Examples: Adobe's expensive Postscript Fonts back in the late 80's/early '90s. Their protection defeated pirates for a long time until someone used a hardware debugger called Periscope that allowed you to freeze the PC and step through memory.
VideoCypher, that wonderful encryption system for satellite TV in the 80s to keep anyone from getting it without paying for it. They used self-destructing chips even. Encryption was based on a two part key... one part hardcoded into the receiver, one part transmitted at the end of each month and good for the next month. Cracked by drilling tiny holes in the chip, inserting a drop of mercury and reading the signal on an oscilloscope.
DVD Movies, wonderfully secure encryption. Unless one vendor didn't encrypt their key like they were supposed to. Once it was found, the rest of the possible keys were a simple math formula. DVD decyption in one very long line of perl code.
Compared to some of the above, most copy protection/license protection is really easy to bypass. All it takes is a knowledge of assembly, a debugger and a hex editor plus a lot time and the desire.
I think money is rarely the reason a cracker/pirate breaks protection. Look at TimeTrax for instance.
I wrote a similar program for my own use a few years ago to use with MusicMatch Radio. $44.95 or whatever it was for TimeTrax Recast is certainly less expensive for me as that's far less than I'd charge for an hour of my time and I couldn't write this program in an hour.
I could probably crack it if someone held me at gunpoint. That'd probably take me even longer than to write my own. Or it might only take a day. But it's still going to take more than $45 worth of time. A LOT more.
Either way, buying software is a more efficient use of my time and energy. These folks have put a lot of time and effort into this software. They're willing to share it with us and want to make a few bucks in the process. Good for them! With the market size of the XM PCR world, even at $45 a copy, I can say with certainty that no one there is getting rich or driving fancy cars from the sales of this software or even their hardware.
The fact that a few spoiled it for the rest of us hurts, but that's usually the case.
