Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!pawl!kudla From: kudla@pawl.rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm Subject: Re: Piracy and Software Message-ID: Date: 21 Jul 90 18:28:52 GMT References: <1990Jul16.221811.7115@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <1990Jul16.222043.7094@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <5105@uwm.edu> <1990Jul18.150659.30066@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Distribution: na Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY Lines: 48 In-Reply-To: wlj1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu's message of 18 Jul 90 15:06:59 GMT In <1990Jul18.150659.30066@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> wlj1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Wayne L Jebian) writes: -> the reason why I asked is basically to find out if anyone here -> believes piracy is killing the 64 Atari>. On a few BBS's I'm on, we've gotten into a discussion about -> it and several people feel that piracy is helping add fuel to the -> demise of the 64. The Atari died because of real bad marketing and technical s3upport that made Commodore look godlike. In some regards, the 800 was actually a better machine, especially considering the 5 year age difference. But, the software for it mostly sucked. As for piracy and the 64..... I'll put it this way. When I had my 64, up to about four years ago, I had about 200 disks worth of stuff for it and quite a bit of it was pirated. Two months ago I decided it would be fun to have a 64-compatible machine so I bought the 128. And every piece of software I have for it is legal, even the games. I may still go out and pirate some stuff that I buy and find I can't back up, just to prove a point that copy protection is the wrong way to do things. But the userbase here has matured a lot, and there's a ton of good, interesting, fun software out there in the public domain. Not bad, considering that when I was running a pirate board way back when, PD was automatically labeled as crap. There'll always be at least a few avid Commodore users, and I do believe there's enough software out there that no one person could even acquire a majority of it. But there probably won't be a QLINK come 1995 or so, and the ever-profit-oriented magazines will probably be going away much sooner. The 64 is not a new machine, and there aren't millions and millions of people constantly adding stuff on to it to save it from obsolescence as they did the IBM-PC. But there are still lots of us left, and still lots of people writing and enjoying 8-bit software. Piracy is not much of an issue anymore, I think, and in the next few years I expect it to become rampant once more as the software houses shift all their production to the 16 and 32 bit platforms. As an aside, at the moment I'm using the "Common Sense" software that was included with my 1670 because I can't get Desterm to run (it just freezes at the white on black opening screen). Is there something I'm doing wrong? If no one notices this I'll just post another article in a couple days, no biggie. -- Robert Jude Kudla Throw out your gold teeth and see how they roll; the answer they reveal: life is unreal.