The earliest I've seen this trick was in Far Manager [1], back when it was a commercial software.
Made by Eugene Roshal, the author of RAR format and WinRar, Far Manager distribution included a text file in Russian that explained how a comrade can do a full unlock in 2 easy steps. Don't know if it helped with sales, but I don't think it actually solved the cracking problem, because Roshal ended up open sourcing it despite of it having a very sizeable following.
Made by Eugene Roshal, the author of RAR format and WinRar, Far Manager distribution included a text file in Russian that explained how a comrade can do a full unlock in 2 easy steps. Don't know if it helped with sales, but I don't think it actually solved the cracking problem, because Roshal ended up open sourcing it despite of it having a very sizeable following.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Manager