29 May 2003 | Joshua Kaufman said...

Sounds like a question of ease of use vs. piracy protection. Yes, that serial number is definitely long and annoying to type in, but if it keeps the cost of the software down by reducing piracy, I'm okay with it.

If we had bar code readers attached to our computers, and the software venders supported a standard format, we'd never have to enter another serial number again.

Okay, so I can dream.

29 May 2003 | hurley#1 said...

I recently set up a wireless network at home, and the WEP code that was generated for it (by Microsoft, of course) looked very much like this. And because it had a bunch of 0s and Os, I had to enter it about five times before it would work. Very frustrating.

When I get long product IDs like this, I save them in my OS X keychain in case I ever have to use them again. That way I can just copy and paste the code from the keychain into the product registration code entry box.

The other thing that irks me is requirements for long passwords with numbers and letters. I suffer from password fatigue -- I've got more than 30 of them stored in my OS X keychain. I was able to get away with using just three different passwords for a long time, but more and more sites are saying "your password must consist of eight characters and must have at least one numeral in addition to letters," or worse it has to have at least two numerals. Then I can't use my normal passwords and I have to create a new one.

Yes, I'm more secure that way, I suppose, but this password proliferation ends up being a headache. Whenever I log on to a site in that I don't visit very often, I have to go to my OS X keychain, open it up, and unlock the password to find out what it is.

If passwords are necessary, at least sites could just ask you "create a password" and not impose restrictions on how long it has to be or how many letters and numbers.

29 May 2003 | Steven Garrity said...

"Whats the deal with software serial numbers?"

Sounds like the opening of a Seinfeld monologue on usability.

29 May 2003 | JF said...

Sounds like a question of ease of use vs. piracy protection. Yes, that serial number is definitely long and annoying to type in, but if it keeps the cost of the software down by reducing piracy, I'm okay with it

How does a long serial number reduce piracy? If I'm going to share a serial number with someone it doesn't really matter how long it is, does it?

29 May 2003 | Joshua Kaufman said...

How does a long serial number reduce piracy? If I'm going to share a serial number with someone it doesn't really matter how long it is, does it?

I suppose not in the digital world. Copy, paste into an email, send and it's shared. In the nondigital world, it can be a little trickier, but the number of people who would attempt to speak or write down a 41 character serial number is probably negligible. :)

29 May 2003 | JF said...

BTW: To prevent piracy I actually REMOVED a couple of letters/numbers from the serial number I posted. The real one was longer.

29 May 2003 | fajalar said...

If they are going to use 1's, I's and 0's and O's then they should print in a font that readily distinguishes this.

Where I work, we don't have a building I, or O (oh) because of this.

Maybe they do it so people don't register the product, and thus the cost of service is reduced...

29 May 2003 | jk said...

Thanks for the Acrobat 6 serial number!

29 May 2003 | hurley#1 said...

BTW: To prevent privacy I actually REMOVED a couple of letters/numbers from the serial number I posted. The real one was longer.

Shucks, I was just about to download MiCal and see if this registration number worked in it ;-)

29 May 2003 | Jim said...

The serial number has to be long enough to A) contain enough entropy so as not to be easily guessed or reverse engineered, and B) contain a hash, digital signature, or authentication code so that the software can determine that the serial number is valid without phoning home and/or looking it up.

Using alpha+numeric gives a base36 representation of the stream of bits used to compute all this. Making it easier to type by restricting the charater set (removing 1 and 0 or making I=1 and O=0) would probably make it slightly longer.

29 May 2003 | Darrel said...

A few comments:

The loss of the 'slash-0' for zero and clear distinction between l and 1 are unexplainable events in the history of computing. Whoever got rid of those should be shot.

Software serial numbers do nothing to prevent piracy and only piss of paying customers.

I'd rather ask developers what's with the trend to license software to a particular machine as opposed to a user?

IMHO, software should be serial-number free and licensed to ME. If that is too paranoid of a situation for a user, it should be distributed with a dongle, allowing me to install the software on whichever particular machine I happen to be using.

To be fair, there are situations where serial number registrations (that lock a product to a particular machine) are needed...namely with any software you hope to sell outside US borders. Sadly, that's still a PITA for the end user.

29 May 2003 | pb said...

Anyone count the number of patents claimed by Adobe on the spalsh screen for the new Reader? Given how slow Reader loads, there's plenty of time to count.

02 Jun 2003 | Jeff said...

Older typewriters required using the letter "l" for the number 1 in order to save space on the keys. Apparently that makes a different to software though...

Also of note, VIN numbers don't incorporate 1s, ls, 0s or 0s for precisely the reasons discussed.

02 Jun 2003 | Steve said...

VINs have 1s. In fact, the first digit of a VIN for a car built in the United States often begins with 1.

02 Jun 2003 | Jes Sherborne said...

Authentication codes need to be long enough that it is computationally infeasible to reverse-engineer them (as noted by an earlier poster). Given that any suitably long code is ipso facto annoyingly long to type, there's really no excuse for having easily confused characters like 1 and l. Eliminating these characters makes the authentication code a little longer for the same amount of underlying data, but it's not enough of a difference to affect usability one way or the other.

Some companies try to decrease the usability burden a bit by expressing their codes in pseudowords (i.e., collections of syllables). If you have type the code (maybe because it's printed on a sticker attached to the CD case) it makes a surprisingly big improvement in ease of use.

By the way, computer- or CD- locked authentication codes like these most definitely do reduce piracy. Actually, it is really more correct to say that they increase sales. Companies don't typically adopt copy protection to try to reduce piracy per se, since they realize that motivated people will pirate the software regardless of the copy protection scheme. Rather, copy protection helps ensure that basically honest people pay for the software they use.

For example, if you have some software that I'd like to use, I might be tempted to borrow the disk from you, reasoning that I'll buy my own copy soon enough ('cause we're both good, honest people). In practice, of course, I might not get around to buying it. Or, I might reason that I don't use the software that often, so I don't really need to pay for it. Scenarios like this happen all the time, and computer-specific license codes do a pretty good job of reducing piracy/increasing sales in these circumstances.

Interestingly enough, really low-tech solutions are also pretty effective. Just putting "This software licensed to " is enough to embarass a lot of people into buying the software, since it looks unprofessional to use software licensed to someone else. In situations where other people see you working, this exerts a reasonable amount of social pressure to license software properly.

02 Jun 2003 | JF said...

Interestingly enough, really low-tech solutions are also pretty effective. Just putting "This software licensed to " is enough to embarass a lot of people into buying the software, since it looks unprofessional to use software licensed to someone else.

We sort of do this with our research reports. For example, when you buy a copy of our E-Commerce Search Report, the first page comes personalized with your name (or company name) on the cover (1. because it's nice to have your name on things you buy, and 2. because we felt like it would help prevent people from passing the document around outside their business). And, hey, now it's only $79 so buy your own copy today!

10 Jun 2003 | CK said...

Did someone say Serial for Acrobat 6. Anyone want to trade

17 Jun 2003 | Steven Moussawer said...

It's really weird, you probably spend the longest time during software installation on the Owner/Serial Number dialog screen. This is really annoying especially when your anxious to actually use the program itself, instead you have to sit there and type in this really long and confusing Serial Number exactly as it came on the CD.

10 Nov 2003 | Scott said...

How does a long serial number reduce piracy? If I'm going to share a serial number with someone it doesn't really matter how long it is, does it?

It's not about that. It's about difficulty to reverse engineer. The longer the serial key (which is generated at random based on an algorithm) the more complex the formula to produce it is. The more complex, the longer (and more difficult) it is to figure out HOW it's created. Thus, "key generators" (a program which will generate a random serial number [yes, they're illegal] which will work) become more scarce. That's why they're so long.

I recently set up a wireless network at home, and the WEP code that was generated for it (by Microsoft, of course) looked very much like this. And because it had a bunch of 0s and Os, I had to enter it about five times before it would work. Very frustrating.

I have no idea what you're talking about becase WEP keys are HEXIDECIMAL numbers (ABCDEF0123456789). There is no "o" (letter) in a WEP key, that's probably why you had so much trouble.

Serial keys are arguably one of the most useless secuity devices employed on software today, indeed. Easy to crack, easy to share, easy to break. Infact, there's 3 ways to defeat a serial code (illegally):
- a "Serial" is simply a serial code which someone else distributed for others to use
- a "key gen" (as explained earlier) is a program which mimicks the algorithm used to create serial codes, and thus can produce a seemingly infinite number of them at will
- a "crack" is a program someone created which modifies the program at a hex level, so that it no longer cares whether or not you've entered a serial code. Some advanced knowledge of how to decompile programs and a little programming knowledge are all it takes really to create one

The serious downside to anti-piracy campaigns is somewhat like a police raid, where they require you to "check in" to make sure a product code hasn't been used before. Especially annoying if you decide to re-install software. Anti-Piracy not only cuts off pirates, but it effectively limits the legitimate users capability to use the software as well. I don't think that we'll actually see a "perfect" anti-piracy method in this century, but I can gaurntee they'll get better (short of reducing the hassale for legitimate users).

I think though, that the better deterant for pirates is offering products at a reasonable price rather than trying to guilt people out of it... it's not like they cared then, why would they care now? Seriously, $750 for Adobe Creative Studio? I could but a scanner and enough art supplies for that price to do it myself, and it's much more worth it. Software companies may think they know what they're doing, but they're on a sure-fire path to self destruction.

And I know many people are saying, "but a lot of people worked really hard to create it and they deserve their money". Believe me, they're getting it either way. What you don't know is, regardless of the number of copies sold, whether it be quota or 4 times quota, they get paid the same and the rest goes to the bloated fat-cats in the high chair that didn't have squat to do with the creation of the software, but they get all the benefits anyway. So tell me, what's the reason to pay almost $800 for it? A more realistic price would be $250, and if you're selling 15 million copies you could sell them for $15 each and still make a profit.

If you paid 100 programmers $70,000 (EACH) to create the software at $15 a peice, and each unit cost $7 to manuf/ship/etc, selling 15,000,000 units at $15 would yield a net profit of $113,000,000.

See what I mean?

10 Nov 2003 | Scott said...

Clarification:
If you paid 100 programmers $70,000 (EACH) to create the software at $15 a peice, and each unit cost $7 to manuf/ship/etc, selling 15,000,000 units at $15 would yield a net profit of $113,000,000.

Should read-
If you paid 100 programmers $70,000 (EACH) to create the software, and each unit cost $7 to manuf/ship/etc, selling 15,000,000 units at $15/unit would yield a net profit of $113,000,000.

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