Can Software Be Protected from Piracy?

You can't stop a thief, you can only try to catch them, and punish them to fit the crime....

could it be theoretically possible?

Meh. Quantum entanglement dongles allowing single licensing of computers via the internet perhaps?

Isn't that part of the point to cloud computing ?

...but getting caught, could prove very expensive. A risk I personally do not wish to take.....

If you NEVER connect to the web, you may achieve anonymity, may.....

And anyone who downloads "free" software will often find it is anything but free.

How true......been there done that and erased it 5 minutes later.....

Ask is often linked in with such software as well, last year I had to reinstall Mozilla, I just could not get rid of it, I could not find out just how thy had given me the toolbar from Ask.....

Awful software....

I believe software houses deliberately use just enough protection so not to make those that would happily pay for their software think they are fools, but not enough protection that would discourage those that would NOT pay for their software anyway, from using it just the same, something that is better than them turning to, and somehow supporting, a less strict "competitor", and definitely loose some user base. (Paid or unpaid is not much different in that context, loosing user base of people that would NOT pay you anyway is NOT a good thing, besides being meaningless. Inside that user base are by the way most of your future clients, unless you send 'em away). For those that can't or won't understand what I'm saying, please don't rant. S.M.

"I believe software houses deliberately use just enough protection so not to make those that would happily pay for their software think they are fools, but not enough protection "... to make the software less attractive to use and sell, with the risk of piracy being accepted as part of the marketplace that has to be managed.

That probably describes the thinking more accurately. Effectively the same thing though.

Possibly does, and the thin point I should probably explain in more words, is that, about "...those that would NOT pay for their software anyway...", whether it's because they can't afford it, or they can't justify the buck per its value, or they have a plain low life "live to cheat" mentality. They, by just using the "product", being in its user base, do add to its value. (Less than paying for it? Yes, but the alternative, is zero, or worse.) It's all about maximizing your gain. You can't force them to pay, if they knew there was a way for you to do that, they just would NOT use it. No gain for you, right? Just loss of user base which is an important asset of most if not all "soft-ish" products. Loosing that is a possible gain for a competitor. You didn't loose income from any extra "work" done for them. The actual mental cost for you is virtually the same, that of your original work, you just sell copies of it, right? And of course this "thinking" only applies to copyable material with big target groups. Is that any clearer? S.M.

Software anti-piracy can be no more effective than copyright or patent protection.

I suggest it's not as important a problem as software security (protecting the data the software manipulates).