Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Soap Software, Stolen Software, Sojourn
Message-ID: <1668@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 7 Mar 88 18:40:57 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Lines: 16
Approved: taylor@hplabs

Sheizaf Rafaeli writes:

> I can't claim finders credit for "discovering" software theft.  
> Anecdotal evidence is widely available (e.g. PERSONAL COMPUTING, May 
> 1987). More verifiably, one can cite three major sources of evidence: 
> surveys, legal literature, epidemiology.

You misunderstand.  What I was commenting on was not software theft, 
which is indisputably endemic in this world of personal computers,
but the effects of copy protection schemes to prevent such theft.
For this, I have seen no reliable studies done, and my experience
working in a large computer game company (Epyx) tended to show that
no such studies were felt to be necessary - it was accepted without
data that copy protection was necessary, even with the full knowledge
that our games were being cracked within days of their release.

Michael J. Farren