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From: bro@RICE.ARPA (Doug Monk)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re : Re: Microsoft Access trashes disk
Message-ID: <2027@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 9-Oct-85 17:19:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2027
Posted: Wed Oct  9 17:19:30 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 18:56:19 EDT
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In response to the suggestion that Microsoft's protection scheme that oh-so
cleverly prints:

>			Internal Security Violation
>		    The tree of evil bears bitter fruit
>			     Crime does not pay
>			      The Shadow knows
>
>     And finally the punchline: "Trashing Program Disk." 

and either does or does not trash the disk as it promises, I should point
out that the standard legal disclaimer that comes with almost all software
says that the manufacturer and/or distributor of the software cannot be
held liable in any way for virtually ANYTHING that goes wrong, including
doom, despair or agony of any kind.

Over on the info-amiga list, someone mentioned that they had tried the
IBM-emulator and had this same message appear ( for a legal copy of Microsoft
Word, I believe ) and had yanked the disk from the drive before it could
carry out the threat.

Given that at any particular moment, I might want to use a program for which 
I paid good money on any number of look-alike machines or other
configurations, I would have to say:

***FLAME ON***
DON'T BUY DISKS THAT ARE PROTECTED IN THIS "RETRIBUTIVE" FASHION!!!
***FLAME OFF***

If it refuses to boot or execute, I can live with that. I'll take it back
to the dealer and get a refund. That much of a warranty is required by law,
and no disclaimer on the package can get around it.

In point of fact, I think that this kind of disclaimer should be tested in
court, given the kind of behavior described above.
Either: the message is an empty threat, in which case I think people with
valid copies have a right to sue for unnecessary emotional distress, or
the message means what it says, and the disk is formatted or otherwise
"trashed" in short order, in which case the valid owner is owed at the
very least reimbursement for the time it takes him to get another copy from
the dealer or Microsoft.

Of course, REAL pirates deserve what happens to them, but we are talking
about valid users of paid software.

Remember this when you get out in the real world and do this yourself.