Patent attributes
An apparatus, method, and system for curtailing and investigating software piracy is provided. The method includes spawning user applications on a computer without use of a file on the file system. A protected application data source is retrieved by an operating system of the computer from a server and placed into a portion of memory not accessible by at least one application. The operating system also prevents the protected application data source from being written to the file system. In this manner there is no file subject to unauthorized distribution. The protected application data may also be watermarked by ordering at least one of executable functions, function call parameters, and program data according to a license identifier so that any two versions execute the same, but carry an identifier which can be used to trace piracy to the source.
