Using Blockchain for Software Licensing to Combat Piracy?

I’ve been brainstorming some practical applications for NFTs, and it hit me why don’t we put software licenses directly on the Blockchain? NFTs can serve as proof of ownership, so software companies could attach licenses to specific NFTs, making you the one and only verified owner. This could really help with piracy since Blockchain is both immutable and decentralized. It’s almost impossible for a hacker to infiltrate the blockchain and grab or transfer a software license to their profile. The only way is if they get hold of the user’s private keys or recovery phrases. But that usually only happens if the user doesn’t take proper security measures. So, I’m curious why aren’t software companies taking advantage of NFTs to tie software licenses to individual users? This could be a legit way to tackle piracy. Or am I missing something? Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

There are things currently being done, like being based on blockchain with Patents; it's technically already being done, so it could be applied to licensing. You know there is already licensing in software, so I don't think that's the problem. The problem is whether software can be executed without it. People are always finding loopholes in this, and then they can always find it. Of course, we know that blockchain is immutable, but a PC is not. They could always do some overrides or reprogram thing towards the software to override those license checks. It's not the problem IMO.

There could be several reasons but the main pain point in doing anti piracy solution with any blockchain technology is the legality. It's still untested and there is no precedent. You can't even prove land ownership easily with NFT. Other reason might be the developer prefer to use their own private centralized database so that they can control the inside of the database. What I find would be a good use case for NFT is game item, but even then the big gaming company don't really adopt NFT because the item would be transactable among users and it could reduce chunk of their profit.

When nfts came, i thought that game companies etc would enable nft based skin trading and that accounts could be like wallets, where people owned games, characters and everything, so they could trade them. What i didn't think about was whole idea might clash with customer protection laws etc. Permissionless and immutable transactions that's connected to wallets without ID create several problems. I don't think that most companies want to touch it because fear of legal ramifications. The amount of DeFi exploits and hacks out there tells a story how smart contracts shouldn't be trusted and how many people can't handle their non-custodial accounts, and gaming companies who embrace this will be seen as accountable for losses and mistakes people do. Then there is an issue with large groups of people who absolutely loath cryptos and nfts. Those people aren't a small group in gaming communities and if they start to mass boycott your firm, it will hurt the revenue.

Scaling issues are also a huge concern. Companies can successfully develop solutions via NFTs and Blockchain, but with limited network capacity, user experience will worsen. The only way software licensing could work is if it's deployed on Blockchain networks with near-instant finality and little (or zero) fees. I don't think companies will take the time and effort to search for the ideal Blockchain that would meet their needs. The traditional route of using cloud servers (centralized) to verify the authenticity of software licenses is much easier and less time-consuming. At least, the idea is there. If made a reality, NFTs could rise from the ground up. Otherwise, it will be the "end of an era" for good.

How can this eliminate software piracy? As long as the license includes commercial terms and financial returns, piracy will continue by offering free or less expensive "pirated" options. new blockchain license will not solve anything here.

Doing that moving their licenses unto Blockchain will provably not eliminate those piracy. Since people doing that will find ways to incentivize their actions and offer either free or cheaper alternatives to the product they targeting. Usage of blockchain can possibly improve the tracking of those pirated materials also offer transparency, but this will not change the reality that people in piracy industry became more smarter and smarter, for sure they could find ways to adopt on the system to continue this actions. The more people will continue to avail those pirated version the piracy will continue to exist. So maybe if the real creators can offer their products at more cheaper rate and accessible to lots of people, maybe this can slowly eliminate piracy since demand on pirated products might slowly sinks.

The only solution to eliminate (or greatly reduce) piracy is to make all software open source and without any additional fees (or at least the basic versions with great features). Otherwise, we need a mix of solutions ranging from awareness to regulatory legislation.

That's basically avoiding the real problem not exactly solving it. Pirates are disabling check mechanism on the software to check authenticity. Hence blockchain will be no different than using private database at that point. Only solution is to bring down the price to affordability. I'm sure companies know it, they just don't really want to bring the price of their software down .

And I agree with that, since if the software is already a open source and they already give great features without asking another additional fees on their basic version. This could possibly lower down the interest of people to grab a pirated version, since with that they can possibly see that everything is fair and all what they need is already there. Also since the devs need to sustain their creation, the best option they could offer is to mix everything like fair pricing, open source plus awareness about the risk on those piracy. Making it available can possible lower down the incident of piracy and also if they mix it up with proper education about bad situation that costumers may get from pirated version maybe they can give strong awareness for people and majority will decide avail the legitimate versions.

The software will simply "query" the Blockchain to validate your license. This prevents piracy, as the Blockchain itself is immutable. For hackers to circumvent the license check, they would need to crack the Blockchain. Something which is almost impossible. Especially if we're talking about a  Blockchain such as Bitcoin. Such approach is much better than just storing licenses on centralized servers (aka as the Cloud). The license can act as an NFT, where it's tied to specific wallet addresses. Customers would just purchase a software license using crypto at an NFT marketplace. This is one of the many legitimate use cases NFTs can have. At least, the idea is there. Making it a reality is another subject. We'll see what happens.