Not to mention more advanced technologies like dtrace and strace which gives you detailed insight about app internal work.

I’m not advocating PHP scripts that store your private information in a remote database. Quite the contrary. What I’m proposing is a method for the developer to check whether an individual license is being used multiple times. Think about it, if you bought the license using your email address, then why would the developer need to use obscure tricks to scam it from you?

An application that employed this technique would really be the opposite of malware. It helps you know that your license is authentic and gives the developer the information necessary to combat piracy. Again, its not malware. There is nothing sent that could be potentially a breach of privacy. The application would simply check the number of times a license is used.

And really, if you’re going to avoid the demos I post up, that’s your call, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of groundbreaking techniques and methods. Plus, if I release the source, how big a chance is there that I’m spreading “malware”?

Really, I’m sorry that you took it the wrong way, but I hope you see my point of view now.

I personally find that one of the biggest problems today is because of

[developers] who simply releases serial numbers out in to the wild and then never checks those serials to see if they’ve been replicated in Serial Box or Surfers Serials or some random web page

I can name many applications that connect to the internet for registration, and seeing a little progress view for two seconds isn’t going to either annoy the user or upset him. You can always use the old “No personally identifiable information is being sent” as some of big names with expensive lawyers do.

Phoning home is hardly an annoyance, no more so than quietly checking for a version update. (In fact, both operations can be done at the same time.) In practical terms, grabbing information (while respecting the privacy of the customer) is no more invasive than the web page where the application was downloaded in the first place. In fact, even less so. The only people genuinely disadvantaged by a one-way look up of a html page or text file, are those people who want to pirate your app.

A developer who simply releases serial numbers out in to the wild and then never checks those serials to see if they’ve been replicated in Serial Box or Surfers Serials or some random web page, is going to see a serious loss of business. Been there, done that.

“People who pirate or steal shareware will ALWAYS find away around it, its that simple.”

Actually, it’s not. For a typical app by a small company, the majority of pirates are casual: they rely on the swapping of a serial number (often a single one) which they glean quickly from the sources mentioned above. They pirate because they can: it’s easier than purchasing.

Cracks, albeit more widespread in the Windows world, are much less used than serials and more common with big-ticket items like Adobe app. The effect of cracks can be negated somewhat if you have a planned strategy for continual improvement and updating of your products. (Such updates, of course, should also deal with known invalid serials.)

People who pirate or steal shareware will ALWAYS find away around it.

You took the word right out of my mouth. However, I do think it’s important to discourage those who might just have a quick five minute peek to see if they can avoid a registration fee as opposed to the malicious hackers. I mean, if Apple & Microsoft stuff gets cracked, someone with the know-how and the time could easily disentangle just about anything.