Copy protection revisited.New Hampshire-based Sassafras sassafras: see laurel. sassafras North American tree (Sassafras albidum) of the laurel family. The aromatic leaf, bark, and root are used as a flavouring, as a traditional home medicine, and as a tea. Software has come up with an elegantly simple technology--known as "network serialization se·ri·al·ize tr.v. se·ri·al·ized, se·ri·al·iz·ing, se·ri·al·iz·es To write or publish in serial form. se "--that just might reduce much of the low-level software piracy The illegal copying of software for distribution within the organization, or to friends, clubs and other groups, or for duplication and resale. The software industry loses billions of dollars each year to piracy, and although it may seem innocent enough to install an application on a that occurs in small companies and workgroups. The Sassafras code, which the company has already licensed to dozens of application developers, automatically polls the user's network every time an application is opened; if another copy with the same serial number is already open, the software locks up until the duplicate copy is closed. The lockout lockout, intentional closing up of a company, factory, or shop by an employer to prevent employees from working during a strike or labor dispute. The term lockout can be fooled (for instance, by disconnecting computers from the network), but for most users it's probably easier to buy a few more legal copies of frequently-used applications. And that seems to be exactly what's happened in the Macintosh market, where network serialization has quietly become a widespread standard. Aldus, which recently added the Sassafras code to PageMaker 5.0, reports "a positive impact on sales," especially of single-license packs. Quark quark (kwôrk): see elementary particles. quark Any of a group of subatomic particles thought to be among the fundamental constituents of matter—more specifically, of protons and neutrons. , DeltaPoint, and Adobe (which developed its own serialization code inhouse) have also adopted serialization, with virtually no resistance from customers. (DeltaPoint president Ray Kingman says his corporate MIS customers even "appear to like" serialization.) In August, Sassafras released a new Windows version that should dramatically expand the number of protected applications--and is likely to make serialization familiar to an even broader base of users. Network serialization has some limitations, of course. Out-of-the-box serialization tends to have problems tracking usage on networks with large numbers of active users and many legal copies (where more elaborate license management tools are required). Serialization also presumes that the publisher offers concurrent licensing See concurrent use license. , which isn't always the case: In particular, Microsoft still insists on a traditional "one user, one copy" formula. But as an anti-piracy mechanism for smaller sites, network serialization looks like the best solution anyone has devised so far. Denis Devlin Denis Devlin (April 15, 1908 - August 21, 1959) was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was also a career diplomat. , president, Sassafras Software, Box 150, Hanover, N.H. 03755; 603/6433351. |
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