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From: ins_anmy@jhunix.UUCP (Norman Yarvin)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Copy Protection
Message-ID: <5150@jhunix.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Aug-87 00:38:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: jhunix.5150
Posted: Sun Aug  9 00:38:46 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Aug-87 21:45:53 EDT
References: <6965@ism780c.UUCP> <1193@killer.UUCP> <776@cod.UUCP> <470@bms-at.UUCP> <184@nikhefk.UUCP>
Reply-To: ins_anmy@jhunix.UUCP (Norman Yarvin)
Organization: JHU
Lines: 33
Keywords: Serial Numbers
Summary: not on micros

In article <184@nikhefk.UUCP> keeshu@nikhefk.UUCP (Kees Huyser) writes:
>In article <470@bms-at.UUCP> stuart@bms-at.UUCP (Stuart D. Gathman) writes:
>>
>>The best method of protection for publishers I have seen is...

The following is intended to be the final word on copy protection:  :-)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have physical control over the machine, you can copy and use ANY
PIECE OF SOFTWARE.  It may be an annoyance -- an annoyance that most
companies assume you will not overcome -- but you CAN do it.

If you do not have physical control over the computer, you may be able to
copy some sotfware, but there is no guarantee.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thus dongles:  they try to limit your control over the machine, but to
really be impenetrable they would have to take total control over the
machine at powerup, and be part of the (memory-protected) operating system.
Of course even then you could run a different OS, unless the boot ROMs had
the dongle code, and then you could replace the ROMs...

Whereas on the computer I am working on now, there would be NO WAY for me to
get my hands on any of that software -- other than physically breaking in and
taking physical control of the machine -- which I do not plan to do.  Of
course if the superuser had left anything writeable from / to /etc/passwd, I
could have wreaked havoc (of course I checked that long ago. :-)

						 Norman Yarvin
(seismo!umcp-cs | ihnp4!whuxcc | allegra!hopkins) !jhunix!ins_anmy

	"Unix is a hard nut to crack: once you get off the shell, there's
nothing there but the kernel."