I don't think you can stop anyone from stealing any digital/intellectual property. All you can do is punish the people who are legally trying to use your products. The only option is to trust the honesty of the masses (which is scary).
If you can see a picture on your screen, all you have to do is hit the print screen button, CTRL+V into Photoshop and crop it. Stolen. You don't even need to bother with the cache, or source code.
Same thing with software, with all of the challenge and response codes, it just punishes the legal user. Nothing is more annoying than having to get a response on a Saturday, only to find that you have to wait until business hours on Monday. If you would have just went to Kazza, Grokster, etc. you could have a hassle free working version (albeit stolen).
In the audio industry, software companies are using really intrusive copyright protections that work outside the OS and sometimes renders a hard drive unusable. I have heard of some people who buy a legal copy, but then use the cracked version just to save themselves the hassle of the copy protection.
People are going to steal you hard work, but it doesn't help to punish your good customers. Just my opinion.
|