mwm@mica.berkeley.edu.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) (07/11/87)
Just to answer a few questions from various people.] <Just finished reading Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer's long posting <regarding copy protection. A major claim that he seems to make is that <copy protection makes a program unusable. He mentions having 2 games and <1 utility (DPaint I), all copy protected, and all having failed after some <small number of uses. Perhaps Mike has faulty disk drives? Thanx for having the patience to wade through all of that. In answer, I've got copy protected programs in two flavors: Those that I found useful, that died, and those that I didn't run more than a few times that still (I think - some of those that died did so after a lapse of months of nonuse, with no indication that they would.) work. As far as I'm concered, *all* of that software is unusable. As for faulty drives, it'd be a faulty *drive* - the internal one. Since it still boots most things just fine, I tend to doubt it. On the other hand, I'd have no problems believing that cp software had to have drives aligned to a much tighter spec than non-cp software. This isn't reasonable behavior, especially considering that some cp systems push drives out of alignment. <Now, if the game is not copy protected, my personal guess is that sales <would go down, perhaps by as much as a factor of 3. Suddenly, it is no <longer possible to survive in the market - your price has just doubled. < <Mike would probably argue that removing the copy protection would increase <the sales. I just don't believe this would happen in the Amiga market. No, I won't say that. Of course, if people are boycotting cp software, sales *will* go up. Which was the whole point of the call for a boycott. From another source: <I also think they [copy protection] should be outlawed. No! Passing a law against something just because you don't like it qualifies as a knee-jerk reaction in my book. It would be *far* better to pass laws requiring software companies to take responsibility for their products. Having to pay for a lost conctract because a key disk died will *quickly* lead to companies not using key disks. On the flip side, if you make all forms of copy protection illegal, you're going to create major pains for companies that make money leasing software on mainframes. After all, their "I won't run after date YYMMDD unless you've applied zap ZZZZ, which you get by paying next year's lease" is copy protection - of a sort. You'll also eliminate the possibility of someone coming up with a *painless* means of copy protection. Like, say, checking CPU serial numbers (which mainframe software does, and even some PD mainframe software). <How much longer can we allow these companies to injure innocent users as they <fumble around trying to stop the pirates? For as long as people are willing to buy from them. Don't spend my money trying to pass laws against the stuff; but don't spend your money on the stuff, either. Hmm, I wonder if the contents labelling and truth-in-advertising laws can be bent to require all cp software to be clearly labelled with the words "copy protected"? And from a third source: <The reason is that MicroIllisions is still a small company that is <just beginning to be successful. They are trying very hard to get <ahold of the best Amiga programmers they can to produce the best <possible products (this is not put in as advertising hype). Sounds like almost any Amiga software company to me. None of them are very big, and they all (naturally) want only the best. <I sincerely believe that with the low volume of product they have been <able to put out so far, their future would be put in serious jeopardy <by releasing non-copy-protected software. Comes the $64 question: What makes you think that copy protection will actually change the sales volume? We've seen cases here of programs showing up pirated before they were on sale. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were people out there who gladly stole cp software, but would buy it if it weren't (I thought about that tactic myself, and decided that I got the same affect legally if I just refused to buy the stuff). <They believe that the Amiga is the best machine around, and although I am <otherwise indifferent to the topic of copy-protection, I feel strongly about <it in this case. In other words, until it affects you, you don't care. I was the same way. I didn't care about cp until I got zapped by it. I now care - and the other way. I don't like restricting myself to non-cp software. I like the thought of buying yet more software that will die even less. As an amusing update: That product I mentioned before with answer-the-question copy protection had the manual on disk. Not laughing when I found out about that was hard, but I didn't. I just figured it'd defeat the copy protection, and my conscience would ease up. They realized what they were doing, and were going to go make a decision about what to do about it. I've got to find out what's been done - and will let you know then. BTW - this is a project I *want* to do. It almost got done in my free time last year, but I decided the end result (with what I could get my hands on) wouldn't be worth the time. By doing this for money, I can get my hands on better things to start with, and thus get a better end result. <mike