Stop a Majority of the Piracy. A solution must stop a large amount of piracy in order to be a feasible, but not necessarily all. We aren’t really trying to outsmart the wily 14-year old who proclaims that all information should be free, just the greater majority of the users. A technologically foolproof solution is not absolutely necessary and is probably not cost effective; it can be valuable if it simply creates the impression that piracy is unfeasible. If a software pirate can be convinced that stealing the intellectual property off a disc is not worth their time or effort, regardless of whether or not they are actually able steal it, the method of copy protection has succeeded.

Present a minimum intrusion during legal use. Any content protection system should work transparently if all possible. A legitimate user ideally should not have to encounter roadblocks which are meant only to stop illegitimate users, especially at every use of the content. Measures should instill a sense of reward and ease of use for legitimate copies, not a sense that everyone has to pay for those that make illegal copies.