![]() |
Registration |
The registration process will differ slightly depending on where you got our software from.
The following only applies to the latest versions of iPartition. If you aren’t running the latest you can upgrade for free from our website.
Usually, after accepting the license agreement, registration is as simple as entering some personalisation details which are displayed in the About box. However, there are some times when iPartition might ask to check your license and that involves communicating with our servers. These checks would only ever be needed for the first time you run iPartition after installation.
If iPartition asks to check your license, it’s simplest if you let iPartition connect directly to our servers but that might not always be possible if your machine isn’t directly connected to the Internet. In that case, refer to the section below titled Direct Communication.
This section applies to customers who have obtained the product from one of our partners.
After accepting the license agreement you should indicate that you have a license key and enter the key in the space provided.
The license key will be seven groups of four digits. The software will perform a simple check to make sure that you have not mistyped the key. It is not case sensitive. If you have bought more than one of our products, make sure that you use the correct key for each product.
You will then be prompted for a name and organisation which will be displayed in the product’s About panel.
A license check requires communication with our servers. If you do not have access to the Internet then you will want to check “I don’t have a direct connection”. You will then be presented with some text that you must paste into a form at a specified web page. You will need to do that on a machine that is connected to the internet. The automatic process sends exactly the same data as this manual process.
If you use this manual process, you will end up with a license key file. iPartition will tell you what to do with that file.
The data sent to our server includes any personalisation details you specified as well as the MAC address and serial number of your machine.
Primarily to generate a key file that is kept on your machine. Most of the data is not stored by our server; we record when a request has been made but we do not store the MAC address, machine serial number, user or organisation on our server.
So why send them at all? The information is recorded in the license files which are generated and stored on your computer. The license files are not stored on our servers.
If we detect a large number of requests using the same details and we suspect piracy, we will fail the license check and record all the information sent to us to be used as evidence when we prosecute.
First off, Coriolis Systems Limited is a European company. That means we have to comply with the strict Europe-wide laws on safeguarding and use of personal information.
Unlike companies operating in other areas of the world, it would be illegal for us to use or sell your information without asking you first. We are also restricted from holding information for which we have no need.
In addition, we are obliged to show, on request, all the information we hold on you, although we can (and will) charge a small fee for this service. Finally, you have the right to ask us to update any incorrect information.
All data transmitted between the application and our server in this regard is encrypted. On top of that, the key request itself is actually encrypted using practically unbreakable public-key cryptography; it is perfectly safe to send it to us by unencrypted e-mail if you so wish, as no-one other than us could ever decrypt it to read its contents.
We take our commitment to safeguarding your personal data very seriously.
Neither do we. It’s a waste of our time and resources developing this sort of thing. We’d much rather improve our products or spend more time supporting our customers.
Unfortunately, the high level of software piracy we’re seeing makes it necessary; it takes a lot of time and effort to develop software like ours, and, moreover, it takes a fair bit of money—equipment and staff do have to be paid for, after all.
If you don’t want to see more and more software using techniques like these, you need to lobby your government to do something about the behaviour of their citizens, many of whom are openly flouting copyright laws.
Most people who say this don’t know what they’re talking about. A small number (people like Richard Stallman) have a more reasoned objection to problems that they attribute to the existence of copyright but which are really more about restrictive licensing terms. An even smaller number object to copyright because they don’t think it works (evidence for this viewpoint is questionable, however).
There is a lot of material about copyright on Wikipedia, for those that are really interested (but be careful not to read just the parts you agree with!)
The chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Brad Templeton, also published a brief introduction to copyright as well as debunking some popular myths and summarising some of the more interesting responses that could be adopted to solve the growing crisis triggered by the growth of the Internet and P2P filesharing.