It's been an extremely busy week, with shifting plans and juggled priorities, the least of which has been sleep. Musical material is progressing nicely, but I am, at heart, a perfectionist. The first step is admitting you have a problem, so I've moved a few projects around, and bumped one which was a bit farther back in the queue to the high fire.

I'm polishing some of the custom audio plugins I use in my own productions. A suite of nine major effects, plus leaner, individual component versions, they all started life as Max/MSP patches. I've converted them to VSTs using Cycling 74's Pluggo technology. My original plan was to take the basic concepts I'd prototyped in Max and create honest VSTs and AUs , but on further consideration I realized the installed Pluggo base is both cross-platform and huge. Almost every musician I know uses Pluggo, so as an experiment I'm jumping straight from prototype to product.

Developing these as commercial audio plugins has led me, inevitably, to thoughts of software authorization and piracy management.

As a musician and free human, I hate copy protection. In draconian forms, it deprives me of reasonable actions to preserve my investment in software. As a fundamentally unnatural state of affairs, it's never transparent, a thorn in my side for OS updates and hardware changes.

As a business proposition, particularly in the audio industry, copy protection is the name of the game. Unless you're already a major player, you can't put out a product and expect to pay your bills without some form of copy protection.

I'm leaning toward a simple serial number for version one of the suite. It's easy to implement and the least intrusive. While it won't really prevent theft, it does provide some amount of attrition.

I also have a larger idea taking shape.

A lack of both understanding and responsibility on the part of the purchaser is the main enabler of piracy. The arrangement between software developer and end-user seems more like a mutually agreed upon relationship of responsible partners than producer/consumer. I ask software makers to create a tool I need, while I do as they ask by providing monetary support. If the relationship wears down, say over a series of particularly bug-laden software updates, poor support, unrealistic pricing or... ahem... the introduction of highly restrictive copy protection, at some point it will break.

In our current era of network everywhere, it's easy for applications on a desktop to talk to their creators' servers. I would never advocate the delivery of private information for marketing purposes, or even anything outside a simple serial number. The serial number is all we need.

A person who spreads their serial number around has behaved irresponsibly in the relationship with the creator of their application. As those unlicensed copies begin signaling across the Net, it would be easy to build a database of trust levels. Which customers have allowed their products to be bootlegged? How many times?

Customers who've proven they can't be trusted may not qualify for support, free updates or add-on packages. Upgrades to newer versions may cost more. Serious abusers can be cut off. A person who blew it by sharing out version one may redeem themselves by paying a slightly higher price for version two and keeping it to themselves. If you're responsible in the relationship, the price goes down. If you install it on five machines and that number stays static, it's obvious you're keeping it within your own sphere of use.

All this should be out in the open at time of purchase, in plain language, so end-users know exactly what is expected of them. Who ever reads all the way through the lawyer-speak of an EULA? The responsibility of the creator is to make the best software they possibly can. The responsibility of the user of this software is to honestly support the people who make these amazing tools for them.