dag@pyramid.UUCP (David Gewirtz) (08/02/84)
I just purchased a copy of Sidekick from Borland International, the guys who do Turbo Pascal. This is not a review of the product, but a comment on an interesting variant of the copy protection scheme. Borland copy protects their disk so that you need it to fire up Sidekick (ala 1-2-3). Enclosed with their documentation, however, is an offer for a non-copy protected disk. It works like this.. First, the original Sidekick costs $49.95. If you fill out a classical license agreement, sign and return it with another $34.95, Borland will send you an unprotected version of Sidekick. Interestingly, this is sort of like insurance..since you already payed fifty bucks for the first copy, and an additional thirty five for the second copy, Borland is pretty well protected against the guy making a single copy and giving it to a friend and is also making the option of unprotected software available to users. I think that this innovative approach is one of the better answers to the copy protection problem. Although I am not thrilled with the prospect of paying an additional $35 for the software to be able to use it, the monetary amount is not terribly outrageous. And, since the folks sending in the extra bucks would have to have read and signed the agreement, it has a much stronger psychological hold than those just packed in with the agreement (and more legal validity). It's an interesting solution...let's see what others come up with. -- David