Anti-Piracy Laws Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Anti-Piracy Laws - Essay ExampleFollowing an audit by the melodic line Softw be Alliance, in which our organization was found guilty of violating copyright laws and of running unlicensed, pirated, software on almost of its computers, the ICT department experimented with both software and hardware deterrence mechanisms prior to implementing the former.With the proliferation of peer-to-peer software and the growing ease of downloading and set pirated software, organizations often confront serious difficulties in implementing anti- buccaneering regulations. Certainly, there are few, if any, organizations which do not have percipient anti-piracy policies but employees often assume that they will not be caught. The fact is that they can very hale be, with the organization left liable for the payment of the resultant fines and vulnerable to lawsuits by the software producers in marvel (Kizza, 2002). It is for this reason that policies have to be complimented with hardware or software -based deterrent proficiencys.Following a February 2006 audit by the Business Software Alliance, our organization decided that since policies were not effectively deterring employees from infringing anti-piracy laws, software and hardware mechanisms were required. A positive study of the advantages and disadvantages of each was conducted prior to implementing software solutions.Special intention hardware is commonly use... Special purpose hardware is commonly used in proof of ownership, to go out secure data storage and to provide a secure execution context for security-sensitive applications. Such hardware is typically more cumbersome for the exploiter and more expensive than software based techniques.2.1.1DonglesA dongle is a hardware contrivance distributed with software. Possession of the device proves ownership of software. A dongle typically connects to an I/O port and computes the output of a secret function. go running, the software periodically queries the dongle. If t he communication fails or the results of the query are wrong, the software reacts appropriately (Craig and Burnett, 2005).There are three major drawbacks to dongles. These are cost, impracticality and vulnerability. Dongles are expensive at $10 per unit and distributing them with software is not practical. Thirdly, the attack point is clearly defined since the interface to the device is a hardware interface. This means that the signals transit over the interface must conform to the software standards. This gives assaulters and analysis advantage (Craig and Burnett, 2005).2.1.2Tamperproof CPUsTamperproof CPUs aid in piracy prevention by providing a secure context and/or secure data storage. By instruction execution the software in a secure environment, the pirate is unable to gain access to the software. This technique prevents the attacker from observing the behavior of the software which means he is unable to identify portions of the software to remove. The obvious drawback to t his technique is the cost of requiring all users to have tamperproof hardware (Flynn, 2005).2.1.3SmartcardsSmartcards store cryptographic keys for use in authentication and say-so systems. A typical smartcard