Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!actrix!kennels!sbeagle
From: sbeagle@kennels.actrix.gen.nz (Sleeping Beagle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: friendly to what?
Keywords: protection, piracy
Message-ID: <1mm9u1w163w@kennels.actrix.gen.nz>
Date: 4 Jan 91 19:00:11 GMT
References: <9519@mirsa.inria.fr>
Organization: Orb Systems Unlimited, NZ
Lines: 34

jmt@legend.cma.fr (Jean-Marc Tanzi) writes:

> 
> Let me state first that I know nothing of AmigaDos (hope that should
> not last long), only a bit of OS and real time principles.
> 
> So I have a question for the gurus: do you think that a program
> that is "OS-friendly" can be seriously protected against piracy?
> Isn't such a program an easy prey for the crackers?
> 
> For example, allowing multitasking means (at least) saving the process
> state quite often, so it should be easy to trace/look/dump it (almost) any
> time. Let's say when the copy-protection comes up.

Let's just say that the collections of software that some pirates I
know 'own' has exactly the same ratio of non-protected and OS friendly
stuff to the highly protected, only-run-on-an-A500-with-512k-chip products.

That is one of the worst things about the non-OS friendly stuff - it would
appear to be unnecessary in some cases at least - and it doesn't stop
piracy.

Even worse than this - pirated games are often better than the original
because of the lack of annoying protection schemes.

Worse again, some of my friend's pirated games work on the Amiga 3000
while my legals ones won't.

Protection stinks!

--
**      Official Signature for Sleeping Beagle (aka Thomas Farmer)! 
** sbeagle@kennels.actrix.gen.nz   || Disclaimers are for sick societies
** Thomas.Farmer@bbs.actrix.gen.nz ||       with too many lawyers.