Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!lanl!jxyp
From: jxyp@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc,net.micro
Subject: Re: software protection - dongles & other gizmos
Message-ID: <29117@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 22:19:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: lanl.29117
Posted: Thu Aug  1 22:19:27 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 07:10:37 EDT
References: <1673@ecsvax.UUCP> <1674@ecsvax.UUCP> <433@othervax.UUCP>
Organization: University of New Mexico at Los Alamos
Lines: 63
Xref: linus net.micro.pc:4494 net.micro:10007

[Apologies if this reaches you twice... problems with an upstream feed.]

> You do NOT have the right to carry the program home!
> You do NOT have the right to use it on several CPU's simultaneously!
> You do NOT have the right to pass GO!
> You do NOT have the right to collect $200!
> You ONLY have the right to play by the published rules of the game, NOT the
>     rules that YOU unilateraly think should be applicable to you.
> You ONLY have the right to do what you pay for as specified in the
>     license agreement, however restrictive or relaxed.  You (should) read
>     this before buying the product.

Large employers had an attitude toward their employees that was very
much like this during the early stages of the industrial revolution.
The resulting milieu became intolerable, and labor unions were born.

As an infant industry, we *could* endeavor to establish a rapport with
our marketplace by responding to its needs.  Instead, we often satisfy
only that subset of needs which is sufficient to sell products while
depending heavily on marketing hype and the mystique surrounding our
products to exaggerate their perceived value.  Our customers are
intelligent enough to notice.

The rules published with most software licenses are so blatantly
unilateral in favor of the vendor that they have become an object of
ridicule.  Licenses accompanying copy-protected software tend to be
the worst offenders.

> Do you expect to be able to use your car tyres on both your cars
> simultaneously

Of course not, silly.  But I do expect the freedom to buy a spare pair
of wheels to mount my snow tires on, and to put those wheels on any
car I choose.  Tire companies, you see, suffer the misfortunes of having
no mystique associated with their product, and of selling in such a
broad-based marketplace that their customers wouldn't put up with such
nonsensical restrictions.

> Write-protected floppy disks are NOT particularly fragile things. Sure we
> have all had disk problems, but what percentage of these were not associated
> with writing/deleting/finger-trouble/bad-handling - extremely small!

Floppy disks ARE particularly fragile things when placed in the hands of the
people who use them.  If a temporary overwrites the Lotus binary or formats
the hard disk with the installed copy of dBaseIII, h{is,er} employer suffers
a considerable loss.  Tell h{er,im} that floppies aren't fragile.  Our failure
to address this problem with a reasonable solution places us at a disadvantage
when we ask our customers to be reasonable in their use of our products.

> A final point, if these software products are desirably things, then the
> software houses that produce them must survive.  This means making a profit.
					 ^^^^^^^ <-------------------> ^^^^^^
Software buyers aptly believe that our industry is inordinately profitable,
if not predatory.  Rather than concern ourselves with the harm this image
does us, we love nothing more than to brag about it.  Small wonder that
we aren't taken seriously when it's our most bloated representatives who
moan the loudest about illicit copies and use the most restrictive licenses
and protection schemes.
-- 
	Jay Plett
	{cmcl2,ihnp4}!lanl!unm-la!jay
	{gatech,ucbvax}!unmvax!unm-la!jay
	jxyp@lanl.ARPA