Slashdot | Software Deletes Files to Defend Against Piracy
Apparently another fuckwit has decided to protect his software by damaging computers that are found to have pirated keys. In the developers words “There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something. I don’t know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.”
Dude, just save us the trouble and stop developing now.
What on Earth would cause you to think this was a good idea in the first place? If causing harm to people’s computers because they poonched the software is the way you deal with these things, then I for one will recommend that nobody EVER do business with you. You don’t have the right under any circumstances to EVER take people’s data lightly, even if they’re using pirated codes. That’s complete and utter BULLSHIT.
I hope you enjoy all of the negative publicity you’re received. I’d be very surprised if anyone decides to do business with you ever again. Apparently that’s a good thing too. Who knows what other trap-door, back-door nonsense you might have programmed in that software.
Display Eater is malware. Stay far far away.
(UPDATE: Apparently the developer has learned the error of his ways, and is releasing the code as open source. Check out reversecode.com )
I’d say that my open source software is perfect, but it isn’t entirely true. While open source protects against this sort of nonsense, we’re starting to see software that is obscure due to unprecedented complexity. Apps that come to mind are perhaps OpenOffice, Tomcat, and even Linux. These apps are fine, but one feels out of control if the fact is that while in principal, they can be completely understood and compiled from scratch, in practice it is something else altogether.
There’s also the story of the corrupted C compiler. It was eventually discovered, and easily fixed. But the story is still out there.