Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!haven!mimsy!midway!arthur!francis From: francis@arthur.uchicago.edu (Francis Stracke) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Copy Protection Schemes Message-ID: <1990Nov21.184231.26596@midway.uchicago.edu> Date: 21 Nov 90 18:42:31 GMT References: Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator) Organization: Mathematics Department, University of Chicago Lines: 32 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. How do you know what your market was; how do you know anybody besides your actual customers are using it? (No offense, but how can you tell what your market is accurately? For information--what program, what company?) >We are considering some form of copy protection for our next product, and >I am interested in any ideas/suggestions for or against protection... Copy protection worked, to some degree, in the days when hard drives were rare and major applications fit on floppies. (Note: "major" <> "good"). It has been a horrible idea lately. The only effective way to copy- protect your software on a hard drive is to reformat part of that drive. A few companies tried that some years ago; it gained a reputation for being unreliable & dangerous. (Near as I can tell, copy protection usually depends on adjusting the speed of the drive, or something; if you've got a hard drive, & don't really know how the individual model works, you could screw up, & destroy large sections of your (ex-)customer's hard disk.) Since hard drives are in such large use these days, and extremely convenient, people will be unlikely, IMHO, to use a program that they can't take off of the floppy it came on. It's the kiss of death--don't try it. | Francis Stracke | My opinions are my own. I don't steal them.| | Department of Mathematics |=============================================| | University of Chicago | Non sequiturs make me eat lampshades | | francis@zaphod.uchicago.edu | |