Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!isgate!krafla!frisk
From: frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Re: Copy Protection
Message-ID: <1593@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Date: 26 Mar 90 10:27:49 GMT
References: <2796@dlvax2.datlog.co.uk> <90080.140503CMH117@psuvm.psu.edu> <395@netmbx.UUCP> <8591@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason)
Organization: University of Iceland (RHI)
Lines: 28
Keywords:

The original posting sure seems to have generated a lot of anti-
copy-protection flames.

I normally try to stay away from copy-protected software, but occasionally
I may buy a copy-protected game, if it is good enough, which happens maybe
once every year - Tetris being the latest example.

Sometimes one may be forced to use copy-protection. As a matter of fact, I was
designing such a program last week.  Why ?  Well, a person here at the
university is writing Icelandic versions of some educational programs for
elementary school. The original publisher requires us to make the diskettes
copy protected, so she turned to me for help.

The method used is fairly simple - just formatting track 40 with some
insane parameters.  DISKCOPY will appear to work, as it only copies
tracks 0-39, but the copy will not work.

Like any other software-based copy-protection, this one can be easily defeated
by a good disk-copy utility, which makes the copy-protection practically
useless, but as I said - it was required from us.  If the original publisher
is stupid enough to demand copy-protection on his software - well, that is his
problem..


-- 
Fridrik Skulason      University of Iceland  |       
Technical Editor of the Virus Bulletin (UK)  |  Reserved for future expansion
E-Mail: frisk@rhi.hi.is    Fax: 354-1-28801  |