It has been brought to our attention that a software solution may not be the answer to all developers prayers when it comes to fighting piracy. There are a number of developers and members of the public alike who revealed in our study that no measure is too extreme to take in order to combat piracy. Sometimes, being soft is not the way to proceed, sometimes you have to get hard. We understand that point of view and despite having evidence that proves it takes only 13 days to combat piracy using the software method, for wider adoption to be enforced, it may be necessary to take more drastic measures.
Fear not, developers and members of the public, we have the answer for you.
Mersey Remakes have been working on a prototype of a new anti-piracy device. A device we’ve dubbed “The Pirate Taser”. When developing TPT, we looked long and hard at measures within the industry across the years and weighed up their relative successes and flaws in order to develop the device. TPT is not new technology, it is not in itself a revolution – from Lenslok to Dongles, TPT draws on our rich history of successful anti piracy measures and brings it up to date for modern technology.
We forsee only one flaw with TPT, in order to succeed, TPT needs widespread support from the industry in all corners. And hence, we’re starting the campaign here to have TPT included in every new computer sold and are starting a petition to encourage the lawmakers of the world to create a law that requires the retrofitting of TPT into older hardware models. TPT is planned to be compatible with every machine from the BBC B to modern multicore machines.
It is the ultimate in simplicity and the ultimate in anti piracy measures and at most will require people wishing to intergrate its features into their game to display one line of code somewhere in the sprawling nightmare that is their software. We’ve dubbed this code “The Safe Word”.
When a computer is fitted with TPT, the device will sit inactive until “The Safe Word” is displayed on screen in some form. When TPT detects the safe word, it electrocutes the user. Should any hacker attempt to disassemble the code, at some point he will hit upon “The Safe Word” and be electrocuted. If TPT detects any tampering with the device, it fries the hardware it is connected to with a massive heat rush. The safe word itself is embedded into the TPT codebase required to run it. Any attempts to remove the codebase will display the safe word resulting in electrocution.
Remember, all a developer has to do is include the safe word in his code. We want to make this device as easy to deploy as possible.
We understand that there’s a high chance of the developer himself being electrocuted whilst initialising TPT for use, but sometimes when working for the greater good, you have to take a hit to the team. A temporary electrocution is better than mass piracy of software.
We hope to have TPT on the market for 2010 and urge developers to start prepping their code for use today. Together, we can stop piracy.