I can't remember who said it or what the exact words were, but still:
If you want to be remembered (or do something that will be), write a computer game. People will write emulators for ancient architectures just to play old games.
Don't worry. :-)
It's funny that everything discussed here is globally applicable. I'm not patriotism-crazy either. Your view added at least another insight into the motivation of such a move (patenting).
Just to make it clear, I do not judge the guy and I find the way the blog post was written pleasureful. One of the better reads I've come across recently. I can also envision being in a situation where I would make the same decision even if I hated it. It's not his fault that this easily abused tool exists.
Thank you for sharing your indian point of view. :-) At first I failed to see how all those local issues make a difference. That is because the whole problem translates flawlessly to a global context and I focused that context alone.
It's not hard to imagine that the inhibition threshold is much lower in an environment like the one you described.
I've only played a little bit with a flash decompiler.
Calls to the standard library and globals (like mouseX), etc. will remain as is. So my guess is that it would be not too hard to alter.
But I'd be surprised if such simple measures wouldn't cut off the majority of leechers. Though as soon as one cracked version shows up on the internet, the whole maneuver is rendered futile.
This is indeed an interesting topic, especially considering the options a) run everywhere and show my ads (mochiads, cpmstar, ...?) or b) run only at my site so I get all the traffic (not sure if this is compatible with those ad-servers).
Well... this reminds me of the drm-struggle. Although the negative impact for the enduser is a lot smaller (dysfunctional swf on a leecher site?), you'd have to ask yourself how much time you'd like to spend with the arms race rather than implementing features, fixing bugs or writing new games. As a "content provider" there is probably no other way to keep sanity other than accepting theft to some degree.
I can understand the desire to get a monopoly too, as I've pointed out. But I also fail to see how the situation is any different in the rest of the world. Don't let minor differences fool you. This is simply a case of a lack of innovation and therefore they have no edge over their competition.
This ridicules the whole concept of software patents. Where they should protect innovation they simply protect the lack thereof.
If it was the other way around, if they had such a great product that the competition had too much work to do, they wouldn't need a patent in the first place. This is how the rest of the world deals with the problem.
Now we know that having the best product is not a guarantee for success. And that's where that unethical edge-taking via patents comes into play.
if (HOST != MYSERVER) { show_ad(); }
This is silly.
I congratulate you for writing an interesting blog post and I can understand that one would like to obtain a monopoly if he's found a working business model, yet I consider such a practice to be highly unethical.
You are right in thinking that you deserve to reap the benefits after you've found a solution to that problem. You truly do. But you're wrong in drawing the conclusion that you've somehow acquired the right to shut out your competition.
I'm already hooked. :-)