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From: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: EA Copy protections (Non-MultiTasking)
Message-ID: <433@3comvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Mar-86 13:14:40 EST
Article-I.D.: 3comvax.433
Posted: Mon Mar  3 13:14:40 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 5-Mar-86 06:46:49 EST
References: <1359@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> <157@leopard.UUCP>
Reply-To: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA
Lines: 29


Copy protection stinks. There is no excuse for a company locking out its
customers from backing up floppy disks.  Especially when the copy protected
software destroys disks and the customer has to pay $10 to get a new one?

The fact that a video game can need to take all the resources of a micro
computer is well known, but I haven't yet seen a game for the Amiga that
requires this extreme (look out when someone does a game that really needs
to).  There is no reason that Amiga owners should pay for Apple II games
like Archon and One-on-One and have them copy protected and not use intuition.

EA has done a great job with DPaint, but it is one of the few programs that
only the Amiga can do so well.  I await more that do the same.

Thy say that the bouncing ball demo takes only 9% of the CPU's time.  If that
is so, then I do not know how Archon or One on One can use more than 3% or 4%,
since those games do much more drawing than computing.  I wouldn't mind being
able to use the other 96% of my Amiga's power at the same time - although
it certainly would affect the game's performance.

I do not mean these as flames toward EA, because I really appreciate the 
job they have been doing as far as supporting the Amiga goes.  I just wish that
they would set the pace for the rest of the Amiga community and abolish the
policy of disk copy protection.  They might try Software protection, which
does not require disk copy protection - that is make the package worth the
price and the consumer will pay.  When a product is overpriced, the consumer
will either not buy or will pirate.  I believe that removing copy protection
will increase sales - not decrease them, and the expense spent on protection
in the first place can be reimbursed to the consumer.