Cloud Helps Software Developers Win Piracy Fight
Once in a while, new technology comes with a number of benefits that were not part of the original specifications. Piracy control is certainly one such unintended benefit of cloud computing.
The last few months have seen major initiatives launched vis-a-vis the protection of intellectual property. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was one well-known policy, signalling that many governments were collaborating to reduce and control software piracy. The shutdown of sites such as Megaupload and arrest of its owner is an example.
Now anti-piracy crusaders have another reason to cheer. Software being distributed via SaaS (software as a service) model is much harder to misuse. Every user is authenticated and logged in, meaning hacked accounts are a far easier problem to control and resolve than bootlegged CDs.
Is password sharing piracy?
A recent study showed that a large percentage of users of cloud-based software freely admitted to sharing their passwords with co-workers. People do not feel this is wrong because only one user is logged in at a time. Whether this counts as piracy or not will depend on how your service agreement is worded.
Connectivity aids control
Since all cloud computing is Internet-based, detection of piracy becomes fairly easy. Previously the hacker industry used to sell cracked versions of popular programs. Modern, cloud based software can easily determine if such a thing is happening and take corrective action early.
Hackers and pirates might set up dedicated “dark clouds” – a cloud platform specifically built to distribute pirated software and sell logins. However, such centers are bound to be detected and attacked by genuine distributors, making it very likely that these will be taken down and the pirates caught. Software companies are watching the emergence of dark clouds very closely and will put security measures in place.
There have also been reports that small software routines are being written to monitor the health of the main application. In case of a bug, they are able to detect excessive CPU use and illegal memory operations and control these in time before the application crashes. Similar software could be written to monitor piracy of software as well.
Free software kills piracy
There are other reasons why cloud computing is reducing software piracy. One of these is “freemium” software. You start by using a light version of an application, often free and designed to make you familiar with the software and its advantages. As your business evolves, you graduate to a premium or a paid model. Since any user can experiment with a free instance of the software, the incentive to steal is lost. Low cost of cloud applications is another reason behind piracy killing. If you can get full capability and support for a few dollars, why settle for a pirated model?
Although the issue appears simple in theory, there are some points that need to be resolved. A person could be logged into an application on a PC, smartphone and tablet simulatenously. Are these log-ins legitimate or not? Analytic software being produced to manage piracy would have to understand this kind of use and device some means of handling this.
While complex issues of piracy control will no doubt take time to develop, the fact remains cloud computing has given software producers a new tool to control piracy. With the decline in piracy, additional revenue that software companies make will help them produce even better products.
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About the Guest Author:
Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.
