Is it illegal?

[Luke733]

Hi,

My friend have send me a prt and asm files created in illegal version of proe 4.
I have opened those files in legal version of creo 4.

1. Did I broke somekind of license agreement rule?
2. Will I have somekind of trouble?

Please answer!

Regards,
Luke

 

[looslib]

Your 'friend' did.
Since you have no way of knowing if a file came from a legal or illegal licensed version of Creo, you have done nothing wrong, yet.
Do not open his files as you now know they cam from an illegal version.
Reporting him to PTC is your option.
If he was not aware that the license file was illegal, then he may be clear, too.
If he intentionally purchase3d an illegal license, then PTC could confiscate it with no reimbursement.
PTC may want to know who he bought the license from so they can go after the source.

I doubt the license file put anything malicious in the files beyond some check string that PTC writes to legal files. That is how they detect illegal files since the check strings do not match.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[dgallup]

looslib "I doubt the license file put anything malicious in the files beyond some check string that PTC writes to legal files. That is how they detect illegal files since the check strings do not match."

Really? I don't think the software has any idea whether or not the license is legal or not. The check codes are just there to stop people from using non PTC software from altering the files. Before they started doing that you could fix a file (re)naming problem with a text editor, now you can't.

If Creo sees a license file on startup with a valid license code it runs, if not it exits. It has no way of knowing if PTC generated that license code or some cracker did. Creo does not "phone home" to check if PTC supplied the license. It does record a history (audit trail) of who created the file and and the machine hostname but that does not mean much as most companies have floating licenses and the hostname is not the license server name. I can have dozens of PC's in my organization sharing the same licenses. I just pulled up an audit trail and it shows users and machines going back 14 years. Some of the users don't work here anymore and most of the hostnames are long gone, no idea what they actually were.

I don't think Luke733 has anything to worry about although he probably did violate something in the license agreement. I agree that morally he should not use the files known to be created with a cracked license.

PTC can not "confiscate" a cracked license. They did not make it and they don't have any info on the person(s) in possession of it.

The only time I have seen the audit trail used is by professors to keep students from sharing models. If you turn your home work in and claim you did it yourself the audit trail better not start with someone from last years class!

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[peppinu]

Once I got a part from a person and I suspected that it came from an illegal version. When I opened the file with wordpad at some point in the header, just after the version instead of "by parametric Corporation" there was something else. If you open the part in proe and save it will disappear since proe saves another version.

 

[dgallup]

That would not have been from a cracked license file, that would have come from a different CAD system. For awhile SW and perhaps others were outputting .prt files that PTC considered improper use of their intellectual property. PTC made them stop, I think that was part of the reason they put in the checksums.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[loki3000]

i don't think it's illegal for you.