Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!bbn!uwmcsd1!marque!gryphon!crash!pnet01!haitex
From: haitex@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: About Software Piracy! (software that bites back)
Message-ID: <2370@crash.cts.com>
Date: 15 Jan 88 00:16:12 GMT
Sender: news@crash.cts.com
Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA
Lines: 35



       Please!!!  This was a hypothetical suggestion.


          If you look, in detail, at the entire posting, I thing
(think) you will agree that there is little chance of the program
trashing a non-pirated copy.  After all, a non-pirated copy would
not run at all without the dongle, and the destructive part of the
code would lie in some post-begin program segments.  Several of these
segments would need to all concur that the program were pirated, and
then it would shut itself down.  IT WOULD ABSOLUTELY NOT PROPOGATE ITSELF!


        Since the original posting I have discussed this dongle idea with
a chip designer, an EE, and a couple of programmers in detail.  All agree
that the concept is implementable (~$6.00/chip for 100,000) and that it
would be unfeasable to break a protected program.  Of course this dongle
mechanism would have to be included in a new machine at it's conception.
Guess I'll have to wait for some new processor technology to evolve.


                                                Thanks,


                                                        Wade.


        [PS:  I wonder if the Government would be interested in this for
                security purposes???]


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