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From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: trial.misc.legal.software
Subject: Re: Software Copy Protection
Keywords: microsoft
Message-ID: <1990May25.040453.489@looking.on.ca>
Date: 25 May 90 04:04:53 GMT
References: <1990May21.175058.4745@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 29

I think that by and large it's not a moral decision about copy protection
being right or wrong, simply that most companies don't want to make their
products harder to use for their customers.

So they take the hit, in the hope that it makes the customers happy.  They
don't enjoy taking the hit.

If somebody makes a standard computer or OS with a serial number which can be
queried (Some Unix systems are that way) then *software* protection might well
return.  It would no longer be copy protection, however, but execution
protection -- requiring that the software only run on computers owned by
the owner of the software.

Since this would only get in the way minimally of the customer, if at all.
(The only problem is if they sell their machine, they have to call the
software vendor for a new authorization code -- in the future this would
be done over the network or by modem to an 800 number)  And we might see it
again.

I suspect that one reason no hardware vendors of small computers have
put in serial numbers is that they don't want to stop piracy.  After all,
the fact that you can run tons of 'free' software on the machine is good
for sales.  Dealers used to (and probably still do) sell machines with
the disks loaded with pirated stuff -- certainly immense numbers of DOS
copies were pirated this way.   And while the dealers sell software --
including DOS, and thus hurt themselves, they are far more interested in
selling boxes.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473