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From: Hooper_TA@cc.curtin.edu.au (Todd Hooper)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: How are some copy protections setup?
Message-ID: <3428.26f0f12b@cc.curtin.edu.au>
Date: 14 Sep 90 07:03:07 GMT
References: <1990Sep13.111657.1@mel.cipl.uiowa.edu>
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Lines: 26

In article <1990Sep13.111657.1@mel.cipl.uiowa.edu>, wolf@mel.cipl.uiowa.edu writes:
> I know many will or cannot post code for protection schemes (as it would most
> likely defeat the purpose).

Well, apart from the standard 'store their name in the data fork' style
protection used by Microsoft and others...

One I came across recently in an expensive music program asked you to
install onto a hard drive. This appeared to copy four invisible files
to the top level of your HD. When the program ran, if it couldn't find
the files it promptly asked you to reinstall from the master disk or
somesuch.

Of course, this is a problem if your cheap Taiwanese master disk
goes bad all of a sudden and you want to shift the program to 
another machine (as was the case with the musicians who thought they
would be able to move the program back and forth between two Macs).

Also, the data files had been screwed around with in some fashion which
made them impossible to copy completely. They seemed to contain just junk 
but it was probably some encoded info about the drive it was on.

Another nice application made more annoying due to a brain dead
protection scheme.

Todd