I won't disagree with that (because I can't), but I find it does not apply directly to software. I'm in the camp of those who say that if you don't want this thing or that to be done with your code, it's a legal issue, not a technical one, and so should be kept in the license.

Making it a technical issue doesn't work.

It would only be worth the effort for software for which you expect broad distribution, anyway: if the code is written for a specific customer under contract, it shouldn't be hard to figure out how to insure yourself with simple and effective legal measures.

Except that the broad distribution scenario makes things much worse than they'd otherwise be. For one, increasing complexity leads to an increasing rate of bugs; many copy protection schemes that fail for a small, but significant portion of potential customers have provided ample evidence that they're no exception to this law. For another, in contrast to security in the material world, once one copy of your software is cracked, all copies are cracked. The bottom line is that your paranoia is only going to penalize your legitimate users, without particularly detracting the bad guys.

I'm not even going to go into the ethical issues I have with the idea of profitting from an incredible amount of freely provided volunteer effort while refusing to give anything back.

If you don't want your bike or car to be stolen, that's a legal issue. It's the law in fact. Yet there are still locks - a technical solution. And if your bike gets stolen, or your things get stolen from your house, without you having used locks, you might not get payed by your insurance company.

It would only be worth the effort for software for which you expect broad distribution, anyway: if the code is written for a specific customer under contract, it shouldn't be hard to figure out how to insure yourself with simple and effective legal measures.

Last week, I added some copy protection on software with a limited distribution. There are licenses protecting the software. The copy protection won't be hard to break. You might think it's not useful - but actually, it is. Because bypassing the copy protection means someone make a very conscience decision to do so. And they could not claim they didn't realize they were not allowed to.

I'm not even going to go into the ethical issues I have with the idea of profitting from an incredible amount of freely provided volunteer effort while refusing to give anything back.

Oh, get off you high horse. That has nothing to do with this. You don't have any right whatsoever on software I (or someone else) write, unless *I* decide otherwise. No legal and no ethical rights.

Well, we *do* get various rights like eventually in another millenium it goes public domain and then your code is a pain. In this millenium, we still get to undo your protections if that's what's required to allow us to get it to work with anything else we feel like trying to get it to interop with.