Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac.programmer:21286 comp.protocols.appletalk:5216
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!uunet!microsoft!peted
From: peted@microsoft.UUCP (Peter DUNIHO)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Idea for painless copy protection
Message-ID: <70400@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 1 Feb 91 22:32:53 GMT
References: <1991Jan27.144523.20674@phri.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: peted@microsoft.UUCP (Peter DUNIHO)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 38

In article <1991Jan27.144523.20674@phri.nyu.edu> roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
>
>	Let's say I wanted to market commercially a Mac program and have
>some way to discourage pirating.  Copy protection is out, since it doesn't
>allow for backups, or lost/damaged distribution media.  But, what if I did
>the following?
>
> [question about network based copy protection deleted]
>
>Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
>455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
>roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy

Well, I don't know about how bad it would be for the network (although,
I think if you only do it when we begin execution or something like that,
the extra load would be minimal), but I know that I've used software
with this kind of protection and it seemed to work pretty well.  It was
CommUnity Mac, which is a software package that lets your Mac look like
a DECNet node on Ethernet.  If I remember correctly, there was some sort
of serialization in combination with a password thing.  I think that the
deal was that we were shipped one product, which would accept several
different passwords to run.  I'm pretty sure the passwords were a enter-once
thing...once you've installed it, you don't have to mess with it unless
you want to change.  As long as you didn't have more than one running
at the same time with the same password, you're cool.  So, if there were
ten possible passwords, you could install the software on everyone's 
machine, and then to change which machines you ran on, you'd just change
the passwords and run them where you want.

Does that make any sense?  I was afraid of that...well, I did _try_ to
keep from being confusing.  Anyway, I guess the answer to you question
is yes, and it's probably practical too!  (Note that the package I was
using was Ethernet based, so the lack of net degradation might not
extend to normal LocalTalk stuff).

Pete Duniho

uunet!microsoft!peted