Selling a Service Not a Product

Software Piracy is a problem for software sellers though I doubt that the figures bandied about for revenues lost are that accurate. I've seen people copy software, games over the years and many applications are copied because it's easy. If it wasn't they wouldn't pay for it. That's not an excuse to pirate, just pointing out that a pirated copy doesn't equate to a lost sale.

But when you run software to provide a service; think of Facebook applications for example, there's nothing to pirate. That's not a great example as applications are generally free on Facebook. The Internet has made this possible but I'm not keen on purely web applications, even if they use a whizzy interface in Flash or Silverlight. I was without Internet access tonight until 20 minutes ago; it's most frustrating!

So I think that if applications are tailored to work locally but use a server for perhaps saving, or interaction with other users, you get away from it being a pure application that can be pirated. The hard bit is splitting the functionality between server and client so it can run off-line locally but not be easily pirated.