Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!archimedes.math.uwm.edu!jgreco From: jgreco@archimedes.math.uwm.edu (Joe Greco) Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm Subject: Re: Message-ID: <5598@uwm.edu> Date: 7 Aug 90 05:52:24 GMT References: <1990Jul16.221811.7115@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <1990Jul16.222043.7094@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <5105@uwm.edu> <24987.26a58f60@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <5227@uwm.edu> <25021.26ac30bf@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> Sender: news@uwm.edu Distribution: na Organization: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee - Department of Mathematics Lines: 123 In comp.sys.cbm article <25021.26ac30bf@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, petrino@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu wrote: :In article <5227@uwm.edu>, jgreco@archimedes.math.uwm.edu (Joe Greco) writes: :> The question, if I recall, was if we felt it was responsible for the :> "decline" of the 64. :Actually no, at least not in whole. The question was also asking :whether we felt piracy was wrong, plain & simple. Your reply was :"yes" piracy is plainly & simply wrong, my reply was "no" IMHO :piracy, although illegal, is okay. Then why is it illegal in the first place? It would seem to me that the law is basically the common will of the people - it would make no sense to have a law that the people did not want. :> Your argument here suggests that it indeed is not, for :> if most PC owners use pirated software, you must recognize that the PC is :> one of the most popular machines around. I'd suggest that pirating hasn't :> hurt IBM popularity at all.... as a matter of fact, might enhance it. :-) :Agreed, although my argument was directed towards the moral question of :piracy, as opposed to the effect it has/had on the C64, I do indeed :agree that piracy hasn't had much of an impact on the hardware sales :of the c64. It's dying because it's a dinosaur, but hey, I like dinosaurs :) Someone tell our CS department that VAXen are dinosaurs. Morally, you're Xeroxing something someone is trying to sell for a living. With a Xerox machine at least someone (the copy shop) makes a couple of bucks. Piracy eliminates even that (not that I'm advocating Xerox copies of copyrighted material). Morally, by my standards, piracy is repugnant. :> I would, however, not consider piracy to be acceptable. It is merely a fact :> of life. I am a software author, so I do have some interest in legality and :> morality. Perhaps more relevant to the original question, I believe piracy :> can do a very good job of discouraging software authors from writing :> software for a machine. Some of my experiences with LEGITIMATE owners of my :> products were bad enough to make my toes curl up. I finally got exasperated :> with the pirates and put a backdoor into my BBS, distributed it, and waited :> until it was sufficiently pirated. Then I went around about 2am one :> morning and formatted lots of disk drives. I admit, it was petty. But also :> satisfying. : :Sounds interesting! (being a sysop myself) I'd like to hear more about :this "Revenge of the Sysop" extravaganza. (E-mail me!) It was really simple. I issued serial numbers to everyone. Quietly. I also added some code to perform a CRC and checksum on the system code as it was booted up. This effectively prevented anyone from tampering with the code, since there was a check from a protected sector on the disk that the codes were the same. This in itself was very satisfying as some of the little pigs had been going in with Disk Doctor and adding cutesie things on my (C) messages. 99% of the text seen by users was SysOp-redefinable, and the pigs went after the (C) messages (the other 1%). Now came the interesting part. There was a third part to the CRC and checksum which was a number issued in a random, nonrepeating method for every compile and every serial number. I maintained a list of CRC/checksum/identity numbers. The system would provide, given a three control code sequence, the identity and serial numbers of the program. This knowledge in itself was useless: the serial number is well-known, and the identity number is meaningless except to me. However, I could then look up the CRC and checksums, and use a wierd formula to derive a number based on the serial, CRC, and checksums. This number was the backdoor. It was assured to be sufficiently large that it would be difficult to guess at it (two sixteen bit CRC/checksums tend to do that :-) ... if this number was received by the BBS, it began by overwriting all it's data tables, followed immediately by all of track 18. Then it sent a format command to the disk, and popped a cutesie message up on the screen. <*lock.*> It's of course not totally secure. Nothing ever is. But it blew some people right out of the water. It was also very satisfying. If you had the backdoor calculated, you could blow up a system in under 10 seconds. I also never had to do it again. Nobody really messed with my software. On the other hand, I still support the sites that run it. :I do sympathize with your plight. But, I don't feel the Software :industry has been crippled by pirates, and, since no machine/system :is completely secure, I haven't seen many professional software creators :giving up the biz' because there are too many pirates out there. :This is not to be misconstrued as a justification/rationalization :for software piracy! Illegal is illegal. You sound wishy-washy on this point...? Besides, you need to remember that not everyone is a professional. I do this as a hobby. I *enjoy* it. I'd also like to make a couple bucks and I don't think asking $5 of people to use a piece of sophisticated software is too much. :Like exceeding the speed limit though, we all decide which laws we will :abide by and to what extent. Same here. I don't read software licenses that tell me that I can only have three copies of a program total. I'll happily keep my installation floppy, my copy on my hard disk, and a year's worth of tape backups (52 copies). On the other hand, I would not use more than one copy at a time. (Joe's Moral and Ethical version of the Copyright Law). :BTW...I'm a programmer also, but for slightly bigger machines :) Define slightly bigger. A VAX-8650 running VMS? Sorry, I just had to. ;-) :---------------------------------------------------------------------- :\ / Jack Petrino (DRAGON) int: PETRINO@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU :|\^--^/| Systems Testing bit: PETRINO@UKANVAX :< O O > University of Kansas vox: (913)864-0443 : \/ \/ Computer Center fax: (913)864-0485 : / oo \ : \ .. / "Rock U Like a HURRICANE" (CBR1000F) :----------------------------------------------------------------------- ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee - Department of Mathematics jgreco@archimedes.math.uwm.edu USnail: Joe Greco Voice: 414/321-6184 9905 W. Montana Ave. Data: 414/321-9287 (Happy Hacker's BBS) West Allis, WI 53227-3329 #include Disclaimer: I don't speak for the Math Department, the University, or myself.