Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!cthulhu
From: cthulhu@athena.mit.edu (Jim Reich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: An Idea for Hardware Protection
Message-ID: <2237@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 11 Jan 88 20:50:07 GMT
References: <8801090958.AA20842@ucscb.UCSC.EDU> <38413@sun.uucp>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: cthulhu@athena.mit.edu (Jim Reich)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 31
Keywords: "personal" dongle

In article <38413@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes:
> The only problem was that a computer manufacturer had to
>bite the bullet and put the 'keyhole' in to the machine as standard 
>equipment. Well that raises prices, and that makes the box less competitive,
>etc and basically no one was willing to gamble on the increased revenue
>from all these grateful software vendors porting their software.

Might as well be a bit more honest here -- not only would grateful software
vendors not immediately stand behind a machine just because of protection, but
they would, as usual, take a "wait and see" attitude.  They certainly wouldn't
go so far as to lower prices... few vendors, new machine = high prices, and
let's face the fact: people wouldn't buy a machine with built-in protection.
We might as well face the facts: a very significant percentage of computer
buyers, particularly early computer buyers, are pirates and wouldn't purchase
such a machine.  The software companies know it, the hardware manufacturers
know it and the users know it.  Only one company might have any chance of
pulling off such a scheme, and that's IBM, and even they aren't stupid enough
to try it.  In any case, it would only be a matter of time until ANY
protection scheme is broken in one way or another -- perhaps compaq would
release a "noprot" compatible which bypasses the protection but runs the
programs, or, quite likely, all the pirates would simply make replacement
ROMs.  The basic fact is that THERE IS NO WAY TO STOP PIRACY.  Current
protection schemes do nothing more than annoy legitimate users.  The only
thing that might have an effect on piracy is a lowering of prices -- many
"small-scale" pirates still buy software, and merely pirate what they can't
afford to buy.  Most companies have already come to terms with these
inevitable losses and take the more reasonable approach of only striking
against blatant, "large scale" pirates who do such things as selling pirated
software or operating bulletin boards.  Any more drastic measures cause more
trouble than good.
						-- Jim