Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!sdd.hp.com!think.com!huxley!steve From: steve@huxley.huxley.bitstream.com (Steve Stein) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Copy Protection Schemes Message-ID: Date: 20 Nov 90 20:01:57 GMT References: Sender: steve@huxley.UUCP Reply-To: (Stephen Z. Stein) Organization: Bitstream, Inc. Lines: 46 In-reply-to: cl29+@andrew.cmu.edu's message of 20 Nov 90 15:07:39 GMT In article cl29+@andrew.cmu.edu (Cameron Christopher Long) writes: > My company's first product was sold without any form of protection, and > although our market is limited to only a couple of thousand buyers, we only > sold 25 copies. Why? Because everyone copied the original 25, and thus had > no need to buy more. > > We are considering some form of copy protection for our next product, and Cameron - If your market is as small and accessible as you say, and if illegal copying is indeed taking place, it might be relatively easy to actually catch a thief or two and take them to court - both criminal (for theft) and civil (to recover damages). My guess is that you can find some allies in this - Lotus and MicroSoft to name a couple. I think a high-profile prosecution of the software thieves may demonstrate to the rest of your user community your willingness to take such measures. Having a "personalization" feature in your software (like MicroSoft Word has) or serializing the copies of the software you ship may aid in the effort to find copyright violators. (The personalization feature also tends to twang the conscience of violators if the user's name is displayed at startup.) If you REALLY REALLY want to do copy protection, which I DO NOT FAVOR OR RECOMMEND, I believe it must be done by a hardware means of some sort to be effective (ProLOK or some such if they're still in business). Strictly software means of copy protection can be broken relatively easily. I would advise against copy protection: it insults your honest users, it is an inconvenience for them if it cannot be moved to a hard disk, and it is difficult for your users to make an archive copy of software which they have purchased, which is their right. Poorly done or malicious copy protection schemes can do worse than this, and possibly expose you to legal risks. Any copy protection will expose you to bad publicity. I speak as one who has implemented copy protection, and circumvented copy protection in order to recover from a crashed floppy disk. STAMP OUT COPY PROTECTION. PROSECUTE SOFTWARE THIEVES! Off my soapbox now. - Steve Stein