OSoLiS - On-line Software Licensing SystemsAuthor Newsletters
July 2003


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Contents

Registration System Now Available In Spanish

Revised Agreement With Authors

Our Fees Explained

Countering Fraud

Short Survey Of Requirements

Info-Zone And Test System


Registration System Now Available In Spanish

Our registration system and all associated support pages have been translated into Spanish, so customers can now choose between English, Spanish and German. Authors can create language-specific registration links as follows:
German: http://www.osolis.com/register.cgi?de+P2
Spanish: http://www.osolis.com/register.cgi?es+P2top of page

Revised Agreement With Authors

We have updated and greatly simplified our Agreement with Authors. We gathered that the length and complexity was off-putting (that's lawyers for you), so we cut out anything that wasn't completely relevant and softened any terms that seemed unduly harsh. We've also split the agreement into two parts: one covers our services as a sales agent; the other covers a license to use SIVL (our license verification system), which is optional. You can review the new agreements by logging into the Info-Zone and clicking on 'Signing Up'.top of page

Our Fees Explained

Our standard fee is $0.75 + 10% of the sale price. However this is reduced by 20% to $0.60 + 8% where the purchase is an upgrade from a program that we licensed previously, or where the program is not copy-protected. These fees compare very favorably with our competition, especially when you consider that:

  • there is no 'hidden' minimum fee
  • there are no set-up or monthly fees
  • there are no penalties for chargebacks (see item below on fraud)
  • we offer probably the most comprehensive set of services, including free use of a personalized bulk-mailing facility to contact your customers

If you collect payment yourself, you can issue a license from your account, in which case we charge a fee of 1% of the normal sale price, up to a maximum of $0.60.top of page

Countering Fraud

Fraud on the Internet is a well-publicized menace. There are three principal types of fraud:
a) Use of an illegally publicized registration key
b) Use of a 'cracked' version of program
c) Purchase using stolen or fictitious credit card details

We have taken important steps to counter each of these types of fraud:

a) Our License Verification System uses a tamper-proof Personal License Register file that contains the user's contact details (validated at the time of making a purchase) in the text header and again, along with details of the licenses owned, in the encrypted body. Few users will be foolish enough to publish their Personal License Register. We can generate this file on demand, so the user need not contact you at the time of registration nor when they lose their registration in the future.

b) Our Personal License Register can carry a 'hidden' key, which your software can use to decrypt portions of code, making your software virtually uncrackable. Third party programming tools designed for this purpose include Armadillo and ASProtect. Since our License Verification system looks after the customer validation side of things, you just need to generate a single valid key and enter this into the program's 'Custom Key' field (which now accepts keys of up to 128 bytes) in your on-line account. Your program can extract this key from the License Register file (of registered users) using the getCustomKey() function.

c) We carry out a multiplicity of automated checks on each purchase (in fact we've just upgraded the screening checks): location, network origin, e-mail domain, address and other features are all examined to determine the likelihood of a fraud attempt. Any purchase that looks suspicious is stopped and the purchaser is asked either to fax his/her order through or contact us. It's in our interests to stop fraud of this sort: typically a merchant service provider will charge a penalty of around US$25 and retain the original transaction fees - a risk that we, not our authors, bear.top of page

Short Survey Of Requirements

To help us develop a service that fully meets your requirements, please spare a few moments to participate in our short survey.top of page

Info-Zone And Test System

If you haven't checked our Info-Zone recently, log in now to access detailed coverage of all of our services. From the Info-Zone home page, you can also access our test system to try out all aspects of our on-line registration system.top of page


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