Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
From: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Christopher Lishka)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: About Software Piracy! (software that bites back)
Message-ID: <300@uwslh.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 88 17:27:28 GMT
References: <2308@crash.cts.com> <4362@garfield.UUCP>
Reply-To: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Christopher Lishka)
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison, State Hygiene Lab
Lines: 29

In article <4362@garfield.UUCP> john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) writes:
>>>In article <2273@crash.cts.com> haitex@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel) writes:
>>>>	  Furthermore, if done correctly, a program could notice if it
>>>>	were operating without it's dongle and subtly torpedo the pirate.
>
>You would trust some anonymous programmer to do that? Remember this is the
>Amiga we're talking about... 

	It seems to me that this has already been done before, with
disasterous results.  A few years back some programmer (at a LARGE
software house) got a little disgruntled with pirates and put some
code into the program to see if the version had been copied.  If the
program determined that it was pirated, then it would trash your disk.
The only problem was the program started doing this on disks that were
NOT priated, which got many a legitamate customer angry.  Imagine your
horror when, all of a sudden, the program (upon bootup) thinks your
disk is illegal and then destroys itself and all of your work.

	I also remember seeing a compatibility test (to see how
compatible a certain clone was to true IBM PC's) where the reviewer
put in a legitimate version of the above mentioned software, got the
message that disk was about to be erased, and quickly removed the floppy
before it was erased.  Pretty good compatibility test!

							-Chris
-- 
Chris Lishka                    /lishka@uwslh.uucp
Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene <-lishka%uwslh.uucp@rsch.wisc.edu
"What, me, serious? Get real!"  \{seismo, harvard,topaz,...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka