[General Topics] Chainfire:
While I do appreciate the "rant", I think you're missing my point - or perhaps I just don't agree. (Edit: that is in response to this post http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=4936479&postcount=7)

When I say "use our own licensing schemes", I do not mean codes sent back and forth through websites, screen you have to type stuff in etc. This is exactly not needed because Marketplace is also the delivery mechanism. In other words, the license code can be installed by Marketplace directly without the user ever seeing or hearing about it.

This is partly how the new system works, actually. However, if Microsoft supported license codes

you

give them things would be more secure (though granted, for a large part by obscurity).

Some authors will not care and simply not use it all, for example with the cheap apps it may not be worth their while. Others may wish to track license key usage, so that if suddenly 10.000 users start using the same key instead of the 1 who bought it, that key can be disabled, etc. Some may want the app to call home, some will not. Imagine that developers that do employ such anti-piracy measures will write their own verification / communication code, this beats the single point of failure we currently have. The crackers are back to having to crack each app independently and even then have a much lower chance of success.

Marketplace is the perfect opportunity to implement such a system that does provide some piracy security for the authors while for once it does not unnecessarily annoy the user.

To make the obligatory bad car analogy that fails in many ways, take you car keys. Everyone thinks it's normal to have a car key, so people can't just take your car. Of course, in line with some of the arguments against anti-piracy measures, car keys aren't really that useful, as there's always a brick - the universal key, and a car thief that really wants your car will get it. (You also lock the doors on your house, right?)

Now, the current situation is pretty much that everyone has the same car key. How useful is a car key in that situation? They way I see it (and I'm sure I'm not alone in that), is more like the actual car key situation. Some car keys are laser etched, or have something RFID-like in them and a receive in the car, or simply use different shapes, etc. That's a lot more useful than everyone having the same car key.

Sure, no matter what you do, eventually things will get cracked and it is a cat and mouse game. One of the reasons this is easily doable is because of the open nature and the very few restrictions of Windows Mobile. This is a good thing. No developer in their right mind would want to get to a restrictive system like is the case on the iPhone or other mobile OS's. That is not the point. That doesn't mean anti-piracy measures are useless though, far from it. The longer you can keep a release from being warez'd, the less you lose.

There are two arguments I hear coming back in various places by various people:

(1) If the normal users can't just copy it, then that is enough (even MS says this)

(2) Piracy works as advertising, you get more eventual sales, etc. etc

Both of these, are from my own experience, completely untrue. The thing is if one person cracks it, it usually spreads on those warez sites pretty quickly.

The big thing here is, the average user is apparently tech-savvy enough to search the warez sites first before buying, and that is just how it is:

We have played the game with that one warez site, monitoring sales when (apparent) cracks were listed and when they weren't (they do remove releases on request). This made a 30-50% difference in sales (with the number being highest during the weekends, and lowest during weekdays). For me that is enough data to know that both (1) and (2) are complete nonsense in the case of mobile apps. No matter all the pretty reasons and perhaps seemingly logical reasons you may come up with for (1) and (2), the numbers don't lie.

So, how would

you

like to get a 30-50% paycut? It's not like us developers are getting rich here, you know. Can we be blamed for trying to prevent this?

Now, here we have the chance to implement a system that is completely transparent for the user and can be made reasonably safe (and updatable), an obvious win-win situation for everyone involved except the warez people. Why exactly shouldn't we be aiming for this?

What is also painfully apparent here, as Microsoft themselves claim reason (1), that they have no idea what they are talking about.