Macromedia's new strategy

[tombempty]

Alternatives? Like Swish......

Go easy there, Swish is pretty decent for my small projects I do and I use Flash for my bigger clients and such. It's a got a little more umph than just the text you know.

[mikecoutermarsh]

There really is no equal alternative to Flash.

Flash monitoring what you do? Sending information to the evil corporation of Macromedia. ha, oh come on.

You can always set your firewall to block outgoing signals after you register.


-Mike

[neueregel]

Actually I have found LiveMotion to be comparable to flash. Altho I am still playing with it. And after the time I have invested into learning and using Flash it would be hard for me to convert to another program. Even tho its within a family of programs I use the most (Adobe). But Live Motion isnt as well known or have the following that Flash does either.

That aside...

There is no way to stop it. I am not 100% sure it will alienate their "Loyal Customers". Having something running in the background may tend to drag on some non p4 users, that is definatly true.


But you can's stop people from cracking something client side. All MM is going to do is cause registered "Loyal Customers" a few extra minutes, and spend a boatload of money implimenting this software. Just to watch it all go down the tubes within 24 hours of the new version of every piece of software being released. Also, but making this statement, they are inviting the pirates to a even "Larger" challege of cracking the program.

I do not condone pirated software, I just think MM is wasting time and money. Where that time, money, and manpower could be better utuilized elsewhere.

/rant off lol

[phacker]

Inside the new SafeCast
Macromedia is using Macrovision's SafeCast 2.41 on Windows and SafeCast 1.0 for Macintosh, according to a company spokeswoman.

More importantly, the revised SafeCast technology still writes to the Track 0 portion of the hard drive, Macromedia executives acknowledged. Although some users worried that writing data to that "unregulated" portion of the disk could affect the stability of their PCs and affect applications such as bootloaders, Macromedia executives said they've found no such problems.

If for some reason Track 0 becomes corrupted, the DRM mechanism will fail over to a second security mechanism contained in the system registry, according to Eric Thompson, director of eLicensing at Macromedia. However, Macromedia is not offering users the option of using a purely registry-based security algorithm, Thompson said.

SafeCast looks for and calculates a software hash identifying the PC, based on the CPU used within the system and the hard drive's geometry, or the number of heads, cylinders and sectors per track. The hardware ID does not check for the serial number stored on the CPU. A Macromedia white paper contains an example of the XML code sent to the activation server. The resulting ID hash is never sent to Macromedia, according to the white paper.

"Macrovision spent a lot of time customizing (SafeCast) to our needs," Thompson said. "The actual license management is our own. It even has a customized look and feel to meet our own needs."

The license manager application requires approximately 400KB of RAM to run, Thompson said, although the attached Windows services it connects to causes Windows to misrepresent the application's size as a full megabyte. Once Contribute shuts down, so does the licensing applet, he added. Upon uninstalling the program, the DRM software "goes away," Hale said.

There is no way to backup data in the hidden sectors of your disk, and if you ever want to totally remove all traces of a program utilizing this method of protection you have to do a total low level reformat of your disk. Not something that normally recommended.



Also interesting, if you go to the site for Macrovision's SafeCast it now states, very plainly that:

"SafeCast does not gather any personally identifiable information about the user or the user's computer, nor does it transmit such information to Macrovision or any other party. "

However back in 2002, thanks to the internet archive we see that the same site touted Safecast's ability to:

"Capture information on those who have evaluated or purchased products."

Would you deal with this company?

[phacker]

Just a side note, Flash MX has been out for quite a while, but most of my work has been requested by the client to be published in Flash 5 format because of the early bugs in the 6 player. I just don't see a need at this point if they integrate this procedure in the new version of Flash, that I am sure they will release within the next year, to upgrade. I've always looked forward to the new versions, but maybe not this time.

[Musicman]

Hi,

following the discussion at www.actionscript.com
- there should be nothing running in the background ... which sort of contradicts experiences that users of a different product have made with safecast
- if you reformat the drive, you still have 30 trial days before reactivation
- macromedia has seen concerns about people not being able to reactivate in a distant future, and tries to come up with a solution. This is different from the redmond people who specifically say that support for current products will end at a specific time, and will probably refuse to reactivate products after that time, too

There has been no reply to concerns about environments where track 0 is not considered a playground for somebody else's software.

Musicman

[Lyra]

well, its easy to say "no to pirating" when you live in america and the program costs $500 or whatever it costs over there.
Over here, it costs R5000 or thereabouts, then you need photoshop too, another R6000 and maybe Dreamweaver also? Well, another R6000 later. Looking at what we earn, a Rand is more or less equal to a dollar. But with the differences in currency, sometimes its 10 rands to 1 dollar.

What I mean is, its just not that simple.

[MG315]

i wouldnt mind so much if they gave us a price break on it. if they are really trying to stop piraters of the software, we shouldnt have to pay all that inflation they put on it to cover pirated software. whats the point of going to all this bother if its not going to save any money? or is macromedia hoping to make all that extra money that previously covered pirated software.

[Orkar]

Unfortunately it is that simple.

Originally posted by Lyra
well, its easy to say "no to pirating" when you live in america and the program costs $500 or whatever it costs over there.
Over here, it costs R5000 or thereabouts, then you need photoshop too, another R6000 and maybe Dreamweaver also? Well, another R6000 later. Looking at what we earn, a Rand is more or less equal to a dollar. But with the differences in currency, sometimes its 10 rands to 1 dollar.

What I mean is, its just not that simple.

One of the growing problems throughout the software development and contracting fields is the migration of jobs and projects offshore to areas that quite simply STEAL anything they can lay their hands on. The next thing these companies do is undercut the value of the work they are bidding on.

As an example, say a project is worth $10,000 to a legitimate designer who pays taxes and actually buys the software they use. An offshore/third world company can get the contract for $5,000 which in their economy could be worth $50,000 for non first world items eg local food, housing etc...
Yes children the addition says they profit five times as much as I would charge... are they really that poor??

And do these companies buy the software when they can afford to? No freakin way!! The just steal the next version and continue to profit. Then they say well macromedia can afford it if we rip them off. That might be true, BUT the legitimate designers in the first world are out of work due to sleezy thieves in the third world.

I'm not fond of background processes running on my machine but someone out there is anal-retentive enough to track every bit of data leaving their machine and if it's personal info not permitted to be tracked, then several people at Macromedia get to experience the American penal system. (Apparently an anal-retentive experience in itself)

If this pseudo-spyware actually stops the pirates from attaining the next version of the software, it's a sad but necessary price to pay so that legit developers have a job to do in the future. As for the poor thieves pleading poverty... pay up and go legit or get the **** out of my profession.

[Lyra]

Interesting this first world = legitimate thing. Funny how difficult it gets to divide the world into first and third world these days.
Gives quite an amusing image doesn't it, the devious third worlders robbing the poor honest first worlders via technology? Maybe its not quite that simple.

In my experience the companies you are talking about have to get the software legitimately (even over here) because, being high profile, they get nabbed if they don't. And that quite right, as well. They can afford it, after all.
As you say, they get the profits from the work they get (from first world countries)and, by the way, part of the reason that they make such a profit is that they pay their workers almost nothing.

Yes, there are lots of smaller companies desperately trying to make it in the great big world out there, who use pirate software. But they are going under all over the place. Among my circle of friends, all the IT people (who don't freelance) have lost an average of 2 jobs a year because the companies they work for disappear from under them. You really don't need to worry about the designers working for these nasty third world companies, because they are all coming over to join you over there in Britain, America etc. Cant make a living over here.
Its not really first world vs third world, but companies vs the rest of us.

[jide]

If people are able to creat Swish, what is preventing people from creating a free Flash creator clone?

[phacker]

Part of me wishes someone would.

[Musicman]

If people are able to creat Swish, what is preventing people from creating a free Flash creator clone?

nothing.... and maybe sourceforge knows about some
There are two problems
a) such program cannot use fla files but has to use some own format ... like swish does ... and consequently all those free components would have to be published in the same format
[a clone may also interfere with some user interface patents - you might recall adobe and macromedia fighting over the behaviour of palettes]
b) at least with MX it took about half of its lifetime (from release to scheduled release of successor) before swf format docs and players for all platforms were released; so a clone would probably always be one release behind

Musicman

[asheep_uk]

Macromedia could at least knock down the price of their Student Edition. £180 is a lot of money. Say, £50 for the Student Edition, but remove features that students (or 12 year old kids) are never going to use. Just something that us kids can buy without breaking the bank. There is no way I can afford to upgrade to MX 2004. I think a lot more people would be happy to pay £50 rather than £180.

[brentW505]

How do they know if you have a pirated copy or not? can anyone find out if a web site is using a copy or if someones computer has one?

[phacker]

In MX 2004 they have intiated a program that will trace what you are using and whether or not you have legal access to that program.

[SJT]

I'd have to agree with Sheepy ('allo mate ).

Perhaps if there was an extremely cheap version of Flash there wouldn't be so much piracy in the first place?
I often think large corporations approach this problem in the wrong way; it's the same with the RIAA.
You cannot stop people pirating your product, there is no such thing as a 100% secure system. If you can't stop them, then the best solution is to provide a service where people don't feel the need to pirate.
Obviously you'll always get piracy with any product, but provide a product most people could happily afford (e.g. a 'lite' version or something like Apple's iTunes Music Store) and not only will you cut down on piracy and increase your profits you'll also be promoting a new generation who'll be obliged to buy the pro version once they become full-time developers.

[wiley173]

This sounds too much like something Microsoft would do.

I bought a student version of 3ds MAX 4. I only have to call in and get a new code for the software if I reinstall the os - which was about a year ago. It was kind of a hassle but not that big of a deal.