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Thought for the Day
" Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible
objection must first be overcome.”
~ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), British Author
Special Holiday Offer ~ $300 Discount
On All CrypKey Licenses!
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Don't wait: This special holiday offer ends December 31, 2005.
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CrypKey 6.5 Now Available!
Due to the unprecedented demand for .NET application protection, we are pleased to announce the release of CrypKey 6.5. Our continued commitment to providing the world's most innovative and reliable license management solutions benefits our software development customers who are focused on maximizing product sales.
Soon-to-be-released CrypKey 7.0, which now protects all Windows platforms, features:
- Expanded Application Capabilities — CrypKey is the only product to provide true code encryption (not obfuscation) for .NET applications.
- Enterprise Network Licensing — This enables a protected program to function anywhere on the enterprise network, thanks to CrypKey's ability to automatically find the license server and transact with it, thereby securing its seat on the network. The client is not required to have read/write permissions to the server directory, nor will it need to know where the directory is located.
- NGN: Now Separate Process — This allows the user to debug the program while using CrypKey. Stealth can be added once debugging is not required.
- Enhanced Transfer — Users can transfer licenses out of and back in to a license pool. This works for any kind of transfer: direct, floppy, and etransfer.
- Etransfer — In a matter of seconds, licenses can now be quickly and easily transferred from one computer to another via the Internet.
- USBKey Support — Software developers have the flexibility of giving their customers a hardware key, instead of an electronic one, without code changes. As an added bonus, this hardware key is a 2G USB drive; additional important data, or even the entire application, can reside on the USBKey.
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New Feature CrypKey 7.0—Enhanced License Transfer
Soon-to-be-released CrypKey 7.0 includes a new feature – Enhanced License Transfer. CrypKey is still the only licensing system that lets your customers securely transfer licenses to different computers without calling you. Until now, the transfer allows a license to be migrated to a computer where no license existed before.
A popular request from our users is to migrate a license out of a pool of licenses, and then be able to put it back at a later time. This is useful in situations such as:
- an employee wants to take a license home, and then bring it back to the office the next day
- an information systems (IS) department wants to check out licenses to employees for a particular project, and then return the licenses to the pool after the work is complete
- a field employee needs to take a license on a laptop to a remote job location, and then return the license upon the job completion
The new Enhanced License Transfer feature is designed to give your customers a library-type model of “check-in and check-out” license usage. With this new feature, a customer simply temporarily checks out a license, and then returns it to the pool when it is no longer needed. Top
Piracy Prevails at an Astonishing Pace
According to a May 2005 study conducted by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and International Data Corporation (IDC), software developers continue to lose tens of billions of dollars per year through software piracy. Today, the staggering rate of personal computer (PC) software piracy is 35 percent worldwide. Although Canada is included in the ranks of the 20 countries with the lowest piracy rates, it remains above the global average. At 21 percent, the United States' piracy rate is the lowest, however, this translates into over 6.6 million (U.S. dollars) of lost revenue. The BSA reports that in 2004, the world spent more than $59 billion for commercial packaged PC software. Yet, software worth over $90 billion was actually installed. This means that for every two dollars' worth of software purchased legitimately, one dollar's worth was obtained illegally.
According to IDC estimates, individuals and corporations will spend more than $300 billion on PC software over the next five years. Taking into account the current piracy rates, IDC predicts that during the same five-year period, almost $200 billion worth of software will be pirated.
The negative economic consequences of software piracy are serious, and they affect every level of country's economy. Software companies cannot compete with the competition that results from high-quality, pirated versions of their products. Governments encounter lost tax revenues and jobs are lost due to the lack of legitimate markets.
Improved education and better enforcement of tougher copyright laws are key to curtailing the growth of software piracy in the future. The continued commitment to developing robust, dependable, and proven products, like CrypKey, is also helping to combat the far-reaching problems associated with this pandemic. An April 2003 economic impact study conducted by the IDC concluded that lowering piracy by 10 percent over four years would add more than one million jobs and $400 billion in economic growth worldwide.
To learn more about the 2005 software piracy findings of the BSA and IDC, go to www.caast.org/resources/2004_global_study.pdf.
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Customizing the Site Key Generator Library (SKGL)
Would you like the ability to customize the standard Site Key Generator (SKG) for your distributors? CrypKey's Site Key Generator Library (SKGL) is the solution. SKGL is used by many of our customers to modify the standard SKG so that their distributors have limited functionality and/or options when selling licenses. For example, you can create an SKG that only allows your distributors to generate 365-day licenses. This is achieved by customizing the SKG interface to automatically populate the field that contains the license type, and restrict all other options.
The standard SKG only allows you to enter information in the "issue to" field. However, the SKGL gives you the option to use any mandatory field that you want, such as company name, e-mail address, and phone number. If the standard, simple text log file that the SKG writes to is not robust enough to meet your specific needs, the SKGL lets you create a customized log file. For example, SKGL can be used to create entries into an existing database. Some CrypKey customers use the SKGL to directly link to their customer service management (CSM) system to track the time and frequency of license authorization.
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Support Tip: CrypKey License Service
Since many of our support issues relate to the CrypKey License Service, it is important for developers to understand what this is, what the installation implications are, and how to effectively support it. This article discusses these topics, and provides important information to facilitate smooth installations and resolve support issues.
The CrypKey License Service monitors CrypKey licenses on NT-based operating systems. As a general rule, it needs to be installed only on the computer that contains the license file. For example, if your license file is located on a server, then the service needs to be installed on the server only, and not the clients. If, however, your product license is located on the end user system, then the service should be installed there too.
There are two methods to distribute the CrypKey License Service. The first and easiest way is to append the service (i.e., that which is referred to as the NT driver in our documentation) to your executable. When the executable runs, the service is automatically installed. One drawback of this method is that the user must always run the application as a system administrator. Another drawback is that you cannot append the service to DLLs.
If these limitations do not fit your requirements, then you must distribute the service as part of your install. Typically, you would code your installation to install the CrypKey License Service after all of the files have been copied to the user's hard drive. However, if your protected component is a COM DLL, you must ensure that the service is installed before the DLL is registered. The user needs to have administrator privileges to install the service; normally this is not a problem, since installs are generally not allowed with the user-privilege level of security. A good practice is to remove the CrypKey License Service when the user uninstalls the application. However, if there are other CrypKey applications on the user's system, then you will want to leave the service installed. For an Installshield 10.5 InstallScript demonstration of these applications of the service, download http://www.crypkey.com/downloaddemofiles/installshielddemo.zip.
There are specific security settings that must be in place for CrypKey to function properly. The service, which uses the SYSTEM account, requires full control privileges of the system32 directory and the license directory. The user group requires full control privileges of the license directory. Most of the support problems that you will encounter will be related to security settings, so it is a good idea for your support group to have the skills to walk the end user through verifying/modifying privileges when required. It is also important for them to be able to locate and stop/start services. For more detailed information, go to http://www.crypkey.com/docs/CLSsupport.doc.
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Let us know which topics you would like to see in upcoming
issues of CrypKey News.
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of CrypKey products, please tell us. Send your requests and
suggestions to us at sales@CrypKey.com.
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subscription(s) or renewals, please call us at 1-403-258-6274
or email sales@CrypKey.com.
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