What Mr. Tomov did is akin to what most virus writers do. I would never buy a piece of software from a company or individual who practices such unethical anti-piracy techniques. If this ever happened to me, I would seriously consider a lawsuit against the offending software company or individual, as there could be punitive damages as a result of the “attack.”

Why bother hard-reseting the device?

Why not just have it upload the address book so Mr. Tomov can come by your house at night and break your windows?

I don’t think the law sees the two things as extraordinarily different.

And in today’s day and age, there are plenty of people who would be unashamed to admit to software piracy if it meant they could extract some money from Mr. Tomov in court.

If he wipes out a hard drive, how is he going to prove that the person had an illegal piece of software? His software is sure to have bugs too. What he is doing is illegal in most states, he should be arrested. I hope by this act he loses all his loyal customers, just remember, a piece of code has no conscience.

There are a few reasons why people pirate, i bought some software and it was crawling with bugs, could not play the game and there was no patch available, send an email to the developer…no response.
Then bought software that was able to play divx and mov files, guess what…i didn’t.
Who is the pirate now……

I had a chat today with our company legal team about this matter and the answer was as I expected. (This is based on un-tested UK law)

It may be legal to write software that if it detects an unauthorised copy it could delete itself. This would be fine in a UK court of law and there would be no comeback on the author of the software.

If however the software is programmed to destroy other files not linked to the “copied software” this could be considered as “Criminal Damage” and the author of the software would most likely be held liable in court for costs and damages, even though the software in the first place was a unauthorised copy this would make no difference to the “Criminal Damage” charge.

The author would have to sue for theft as a separate claim, if he had any money left.

Our legal team found this an interesting issue and are not aware of this practice. They have now decided to draw up a few contracts to present to our software providers that under no circumstances they undertake this practice.

The conclusion was if your machine is erased by malicious software and you can trace the author of that software then consider claiming damages, you would most likely win. You may get done for piracy in the process though, unless you were testing compatibility prior to purchase that is.

The people who get their stuff wiped are acting illegally as well.. so who exactly is in the wrong? It’s hard to tell from my point of view, someone who isn’t a developer and isn’t a pirate, but just an honest user.

-arebelspy

No matter what, the software author has absolutely zero right to do this. It is illegal. Deleting his own program is one thing, but wiping anything else on the persons computer/pda is not legal. He/She is setting themself up for one potential lawsuit.

The developer in question must be pretty pissed off with the pirates to loose his cool like he did and implement the hard reset functionality for those entering an invalid license key well known from the hacker’s community. Mate you lost it!

The interesting thing though is that the threat is real and any program could do this. The threat could come from freeware, virus or any other executable making its way somehow to the PPC thus potentially destroying valuable data.

Ideally there would a policy management software on the PPC preventing selected application(s) (all per default) to be trusted to execute low level calls such as hard reset or deleting files, unless explicitly accepted by the user.

I am sure any user would say no to the following prompt:

Pocket mechanic is about to wipe all your data from your PPC now. Do you want to continue? NO YES.

—-

Anton maybe you should consider writing something like this, rather than spending some of your valuable time implementing code that has annoyed the vast majority of users out there (legal and illegal). Nobody likes carrying bombs unknowingly even if they are not supposed to blow under normal circumstances.

As a software pirate (but one who feels eternally guilty for his practice, definitely), I completely sympathise with these people. I’m sure someone’s said this before, and I apologise for not reading over preveous posts, but software developers aren’t fighting against their own audience in this case. They’re going against the people who destroy their business.

Oh well, just my two cents.

This
Mr Anton Tomov is Freaking out, what Nerve to Erase all the DAta , Personal Info, If it piracy he could just Nag or disable the Software from Running, but Destroy other Info and Data , That is Criminal act Not less than Piracy.
If more people use it , even piracy , more Marketing is conduct , “Word of mouth” that de facto, If less will use it , less piracy and less Purchasing .
I am against Piracy , i am developer too, But to erase – Hard Reset it is Crime and damage Personal properties, Mr Anton Tomov must think he is the New Master of the World or so , i think he should go down from his High Tree nad Compensate damaged info.
Have nice day and Happy Programing..

That’s true jk, bt Anton I trust, and I don’t think it’s been violated in this case because everything was overblown.

If he had made it so ALL illegal stuff was nuked and then scaled it back to just this one code that’s harder to trust.. but he started out with this simple mechanism and if it stays like that I fully spport him and his products (which are great, along with his customer service).

-arebelspy

It’s true the author says that is the only way you could wipe your device out but once a developer crosses that line with destructive code I’m not inclined to believe him/her when they state that. It’s a trust thing and once it’s been violated it’s hard for me to give it back.

“Software piracy is bad. No one disputes that fact”

*cough* except for the thousands of people who do it…

Mike: You must have used a code that you illegally obtained then. He only blocked out ONE code that has been illegally shaared on various warez sites and IRC channels. If you would have just used the demo (30 days, donno how your PDA dying has anything to do with it) instead of stealing from this awesome developer it wouldn’t have happened, IMO.

I was mad at first, thinking if someone typo’d they’d lose everything, but the way he did it (block out one illegal code) is perfectly fine to me, and those people deserve what they get.

Please note that this is my personal opinion, and not the ones expressed by this site or its owners.

-arebelspy

Mike

The similar anti-piracy technique was seen here:

http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000361.php

Bhavesh