Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!lll-winken!gauss.llnl.gov!casey
From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Ye Old Discard Protocol (WKS == 9)
Message-ID: <40114@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 1 Dec 89 08:00:21 GMT
References: <8911301910.AA03187@sneezy.lanl.gov>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Reply-To: casey@gauss.llnl.gov.UUCP (Casey Leedom)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 31

Philip,
  What you're probably seeing is a very disgusting habit that seems to be
developing among purveyers of commercial network products.  They
broadcast their license numbers in an effort to prevent users from
copying their software and using multiple copies simultaneously on a
local network.  Some broadcast their licenses continuously every few
seconds in an effort to avoid people partitioning their networks,
starting up copies of the same program on isolated sections of the
network and then rejoining the network ...  I shit you not.

  This is a particularly revolting technique of copy protection since
these licenses are encapsulated in broadcast packets that interrupt every
host on the network.  Since we have a flat network of over 2000 hosts
here at LLNL, the potential disruption is dramatic for us.  We told the
manufacturers that we strongly disagree with their practice, have
suggested that they register a multicast address and use that, and have
threatened to install filters for their stupid packets.  This last is a
completely empty threat since the bridges we have (DEC LanBridge 100s)
don't support this kind of packet filtering, we don't have money to buy
new bridges, and even if we did have, the administrative effort needed to
maintain all the filters is more time than we can afford.

  I can say that if we (our network support group) learns that a product
uses this technique, we will advertise it as a prohibited product on our
network.  We just can't afford to have our network distroyed by a few
companies who prefer to invest their time in stupid copy protection
schemes rather than in improving their product and support, thereby making
it unprofitable to copy their product.  (By copying such a product you'd
still be out the documentation, support, etc.)

Casey


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