Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!decvax!mcnc!ece-csc!ncrcae!ncr-sd!crash!pro-charlotte.cts.com!miket
From: miket@pro-charlotte.cts.com (Mike Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Dongle blues
Message-ID: <2374@crash.cts.com>
Date: 16 Jan 88 05:24:49 GMT
Sender: news@crash.cts.com
Lines: 25


 Dongles are just not the answer. The fact remains that there is not
ONE amiga program out there on the market today that uses a dongle
that has not been cracked, hacked, or usually just de-dongled by Marauder II
and Amiga Dos's disk structure is not all that complicated. Admittedly
you could have a complicated and integral part of the code residing
in the dongle, but that would be more trouble than its worth. More
people would become frustrated with dongle software, I for one dont
relish the idea of having a dongle case with assorted devices to
run my software.  I think the best solution to software piracy is what
micro-illusions has done recently with firepower, make the games
so inexpensive that most pirates will just buy them and in the 
process get documentation.. If software developers could find some
'main' publishing warehouse where they just submit the program
and it is copied numerous times and package in LARGE scale, software
prices could come under 7 dollars.  Just look in your local bookstore,
there are hundreds of books, most under 5 dollars, and each one 
(well most anyway) represents a major effort on the part of the author.
The same is true with software developers but there are no publishers
for computers that are large enough to handle the volume required
to bring software prices down. Just think, if a fully documented game
only cost about 5 dollars, and was a good program, it could be
quite succesful in the computer market.  
 
   Like someone earlier said, Ive got my asbestos suit on!