Piracy - The Battle

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I'm a bit confused, are you saying that you'd like it so only people who purchased the actual Xenforo license have access to resources? I know I'm just down as an associate to the original purchaser, yet I've paid for resources, installed a few add ons in my time and never put anything on the internet to be pirated, so I'm not sure it's a good solution and doesn't necessarily mean you'll reduce piracy that much and you could lose (a few) customers.

The other suggestions seem decent, I'm sure an easier way to track serial offenders would be useful.
 
I'm a bit confused, are you saying that you'd like it so only people who purchased the actual Xenforo license have access to resources?

No, that isn't what I am saying.

I am saying I would like our developers here to be able to match these associated users to the MAIN license holder.

Like, whatever user gave you access, if you pirate, and are caught, not only are you and your email banned, your partner's is as well, along with revoking the license.

Nothing really changes in my suggestion. Only a way for developers to identify who is who.
 
No, that isn't what I am saying.

I am saying I would like our developers here to be able to match these associated users to the MAIN license holder.

Like, whatever user gave you access, if you pirate, and are caught, not only are you and your email banned, your partner's is as well, along with revoking the license.

Nothing really changes in my suggestion. Only a way for developers to identify who is who.

Thanks for clearing that up, that sounds fair enough. Just got a little confused there.
 
Let's make it simple. Two ways to fight piracy:
  1. Targeting the websites. There are mainly four: one Vietnamese forum - one Russian forum and two English forum.
    Fighting them means starting legal actions against them. So let's forget the Vietnamese et Russian websites, it will be useless.
    About the English forums. One is a just a group of incompetents pretending to nullify scripts whereas script didn't have any protection. Its main administrator might have been localised in England (the information must be confirmed). So legal action might be taken against it. Now this website is actually currently down and the addons available there has been decreased a lot. For the other english website, administrators are good at hiding their traces. So it's just a waste of time.
  2. Targeting the users. This is the easiest way. "You illegally share copyrighted materials, your license is revoked - End of the story". Easier to say than to do: if reporting takes time, checking and bringing some facts take even more. So if someone has already spent a lot of time to implement a detection system and/or search facts, it might no be enough for XenForo to take a final decision. So again, most of the time it's again and unfortunately a waste of time. But this is still the best solution and the small api that a coder did to get his banned customers list was nice and efficient.
I didn't include the solution to protect the code by encryption (ie: ioncube), because it's simply bad. Customers hate this. Even if a coder is well-known sometimes his code might need to be checked to be customized for one's own website. And anyway, some of the above websites seem to have the tools to decrypt it. So it's again a waste of time.
 
Perhaps to counter any such claims it could be weighted with ratings on the resources, or something similar.
the problem with that is...that is also capable of being abused...besides....not everyone rates things....

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xxms-bbcode-mediasites-package.27/
128 downloads - 2 reviews....

If I had gotten no reviews and then one person who doesn't like me downloads it just to vote and say it sucks and that it broke their chit even if it doesn't and if it didn't , it wouldn't matter, I would be denied access. I also have posted things in the middle of threads specifically for one person who asks...and because it is not in the resource manager it could not be voted on and it would at two levels deny me access to the proposed developers and contributors forum.

A system setup on that criteria would fail hard and would make people feel singled out. Also if the people in that forum are not hand selected by STAFF only, there is no way that this would work without people doing things to sway things in their favor and it will cause a trickle down effect of BS that effects even people who dont care about this issue or anything related.


I always thought the phpBB had a good idea with the mods that are released and available via their website all have to be validated by a member of their mod team

https://www.phpbb.com/mods/rules-and-policies/db/general/
again if the mod team is not made up of staff member explicitly, this will get abused...and if it is staff members who make up this panel...that is just more people that need to be made staff because that is a lot of stuff to check on, which is not a quick and easy thing...the checking of addons or gaining trustworthy staff members.

Either way all that would do is give addon users the impression the XF is responsible for third party code...which would be nuts for them to do.
 
Either way all that would do is give addon users the impression the XF is responsible for third party code...which would be nuts for them to do.
This.

The issue of "verifying" add-ons has been discussed numerous times in the past and it always comes down to time and resources and the fact that people would then assume XenForo Ltd. is in some way responsible for endorsing the add-on.
 
again if the mod team is not made up of staff member explicitly, this will get abused...and if it is staff members who make up this panel...that is just more people that need to be made staff because that is a lot of stuff to check on, which is not a quick and easy thing...the checking of addons or gaining trustworthy staff members.

Either way all that would do is give addon users the impression the XF is responsible for third party code...which would be nuts for them to do.
Well yes, however, the MOD team on there is a group of people who have been selected and assigned that position, and that is all they are responsible for on there.

https://www.phpbb.com/community/memberlist.php?mode=group&g=7331

I'm not sure if this is going off topic though, but looking at this also from the other side. How would someone know that the add-on they are installing isn't actually doing something untoward? Something that looks like a simple modification could be doing anything in the back end (farming e-mail address from the DB for example?). Most people installing the modifications aren't in a position to study the code and see / understand what it's actually doing.
 
Which is why if XenForo was to "verify" each and every add-on they would have to go through every single line of code, which is impractical.
 
Rather than rely on IonCube encoding, which a lot of hosts won't support, xF could use it's own custom encoder possibly for add-ons, including an API for verification of license ownership. That would be a "pie in the sky" concept, and would require a lot of work to accomplish and support it.

I just think that if you're gonna do something about piracy, do something that severely prevents it, and not something half-assed.
 
The associated user thing won't help much. My account here is attached to another licence that I do not own, and I have not nor would I ever download an add-on to release elsewhere.

The associated user helps when you have more than one administrator on your site, they can download add-ons from here, or request help, without having to do so via another party. It helps me when I'm maintaining forums.

There's very little you can actually do if someone wants to pirate your stuff.
 
I am saying I would like our developers here to be able to match these associated users to the MAIN license holder.

This would have a lot of privacy issues.. It's no ones business but xF who is a add-on to your license. It would need to be a simple yes or no. It would also need to be a opt in. xF doesn't have the user group labeled as several felt it is no ones business if they own a license or not. vB does it too. You can't tell unless they post in a license section.
 
This would have a lot of privacy issues.. It's no ones business but xF who is a add-on to your license. It would need to be a simple yes or no. It would also need to be a opt in. xF doesn't have the user group labeled as several felt it is no ones business if they own a license or not. vB does it too. You can't tell unless they post in a license section.

Thanks for your opinion.
 
The associated user thing won't help much. My account here is attached to another licence that I do not own, and I have not nor would I ever download an add-on to release elsewhere.

The associated user helps when you have more than one administrator on your site, they can download add-ons from here, or request help, without having to do so via another party. It helps me when I'm maintaining forums.

There's very little you can actually do if someone wants to pirate your stuff.

Sure it will. It will hold the license owner ACCOUNTABLE.

I know what the associated user does here, I am not suggestion they not be able to download.
 
It would admittedly be a little easier if Xenforo had Customer and Associate usergroups, rather than just having everyone in together.

There are several discussions going on in this thread, The Resource Providers forum does a lot more than just attempt to counter piracy, perhaps we should have a seperate discussion on that.

Same with the Verifying of Add ons.

All worthwhile discussions, quite apart from piracy.
 
The problem with verifying add-ons and things relating to that is that the software provided here is all open-sourced. Anyone can download the software, remove the verifications (provided they have knowledge) and then re-use or re-distribute as they will.
 
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