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From: breidenb@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Oliver Breidenbach)
Subject: Re: Warning: Quark XPress OBNOXIOUS install proc
Message-ID: <1991Jun12.103406.4712@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE>
Originator: breidenb@sunwartung1.informatik.tu-muenchen.de
Sender: news@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE
Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
References:  <287787.28545A15@cmhgate.FIDONET.ORG>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1991 10:34:06 GMT
Lines: 37


In article <287787.28545A15@cmhgate.FIDONET.ORG> Adam.Frix@p18.f20.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Adam Frix) writes:
>
>I can indeed blame a company for assuming that its customers, who shelled out $500 or so for the program, are willing to blatantly ignore the license agreement and give copies away to anyone they please.  For Quark to assume by default that its customers 
>are crooks and therefore the program needs some sort of protection--ANY sort of protection--against such thieves is, IMHO, a crass act, not a class act.


I think you never installed Quark XPress. It is very easy and doesn't last 
more than 10 minutes. After the installation is completed you can copy QXP and
give it away. The only copy protection is that your name and adress (if you
gave it during the installation procedure) is now stored in the program and
that you can start the program only one at a time on your lan. This is not a
classic "copy-protection" it is merely a "enforce license agreement" mechanism
and it doesn't do you any harm. BTW, you are shurely the only person in this
universe who had never touched a piece of pirated software. But for the rest
it must be made as hard as possible to pirate the software without annoying the
bunch of legal users.

>And to you and others who insist that "Yeah, sure, it's copy protected and that causes problems, but look at all those great features!", I say those features are entirely useless if the copy protection scheme forces a situation where the user doesn't have
> access to them.

You can hardly call that "copy protection" as I said before.

>Quark might do itself a little better by loosening up a bit.  Assuming that your customers are crooks is not good.

I personally am a customer and I don't bother if they assume that I am a crook
as long as I can use their software which I have payed a lot of money for.
BTW, I have received at least four free updates from them since I bought it. 
They even came without me having to ask for. That's what I call "service".
I can pirate MS Word because it isn't protected at all, but I never got
even an anouncement from them about the 4.00D release and learned only by
chance about it, even though I have payed for it as well...
What I like to say is that Quark does not seem to terrorize their customers...

Oliver. (just adding a few things, don't take them personal, Adam.)