Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!src.honeywell.com!msi.umn.edu!sctc.com!miracle From: miracle@sctc.com (Barry Miracle) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Copy protection (was Re: Awesome! No I am Pi**ed!) Message-ID: <1990Dec5.003720.18341@sctc.com> Date: 5 Dec 90 00:37:20 GMT References: <49144@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> Organization: Secure Computing Technology Corporation Lines: 47 v092mgp5@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Scott K Wood) writes: >In article , jkh@bambam.pcs.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes... >[stuff deleted] >>games. Another technique is the code wheel or manual page lookup >>protection. I have yet to hear about a pirated game being distributed >>with xerox'd documentation and/or duplicated code wheels! (and if any cases >^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>of this do exist, I'm sure they're very very rare). I have seem several > By saying this you are obviously not very familiar with the wrold >of software piracy. True, pirates do not duplicate the documentation >or code wheels, BUT THEY WRITE PROGRAMS THAT BYPASS THAT PROCTECTION. >I once remember seeing a copy of Rocket Ranger. In that game, the >copy protection was cleverly incorporated into the game. You had to >specify how much fuel you needed to get from one country to another. To >do this required a code wheel supplied in the game. That turned out >to be far from perfect however. In the copy I saw, the pirate had >written a program to run in the backround that asked the user for the >current country and the destination country, and then gave the user >the correct code! Yes, but everyone has seen programs copied in spite of the disk-base copy protection also. The advantage of the manual protection is that I can use a backup of the program to play the game. I have an old A1000 and I have had a lot trouble booting some of these highly protected games. As always though it is the honest customer that must pay the price for the dishonest ones by putting up with increasingly less reliable schemes of disk-based copy protection. I can tell you this though. Before I buy a game I listen to the net for a while and determine if the thing is buggy or it people complain about it crashing because of the copy-protection. If people complain I vote with my pocket book. > Scott > BITNET : v092mgp5@ubvms.bitnet > INTERNET : v092mgp5@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu I realize that none of this is new to anyone(or is anything in this string new, but hopefully someone who matters is listening). Barry Miracle miracle@sctc.com