Practical Protection

The practical protection for the software can be provided by a large number of different means that effectively exclude almost everyone from utilisation or disposal with the software. The key to ensure such a protection usually lies in the software itself or in the machine on which it is being run. This cathegory of protection methods comprises of virtually any means, tools or procedures intended to restrict or manage the scope of activities one can perform with the software. The most common of them are:

• Digital rights management technologies (DRM)
• Product key
• Activation
• Exclusive association with certain hardware cofiguration (sometimes referred to as OEM)
  
• On demand accessibility
  

Video tutorial describing the use of so called "dongle", which is usually used as a hardware protection for rather expensive and specialised software.	Open the Wikipedia article on copy protection by clicking the image above.

With no regard to the actual method the typical feature and also the greatest advantage of the practical protection is that factual obstacles are being created for everyone who intends to use the software without the authorisation of the owner. The main weakness of the protection however lies in the very same feature, since the obstacles affect those who are entitled to use or dispose with the software in certain ways as well. Furthermore the obstacles can usually be overcome by users that have high level of expertise and then utilised illegally. In such cases the rightful users are forced to use the software that has certain limitations arising from the protection, while the unauthorised users can use the software with the limitations removed. The fact have often caused some discontent among software users.