Penalties range from statutory damages ($2,500–$25,000 per violation in the US) to criminal charges for commercial decoding operations.
If you are currently evaluating code protection tools or attempting to recover an older project, let me know: sourceguardian decoder
A: Use PHP 8's OPcache with file permissions, or move to a compiled language (Go, Rust, C#) if protection is critical. Or shift to a SaaS model where code never leaves your server. Penalties range from statutory damages ($2