Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!tank!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!kenny
From: kenny@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: built-in security features
Message-ID: <3300048@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 89 20:09:00 GMT
References: <8846@nsc.nsc.com>
Lines: 25
Nf-ID: #R:nsc.nsc.com:8846:m.cs.uiuc.edu:3300048:000:1290
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!kenny    Feb  6 14:09:00 1989


/* Written 10:44 am  Feb  2, 1989 by mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu in m.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.arch */
What would your company do if a purchase order had such a clause?
/* End of text from m.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.arch */

At least one company that I worked for would run screaming and never
speak to you as a customer again -- and they didn't use nor believe in
copy protection.

But consider -- you get a new model disc or something -- something
that maybe wasn't even invented at the time the software was released
-- and suddenly the program no longer works (Maybe it's got timing
dependencies, or something).  Now you whine, `But this violates the
clause that says the software has to continue to run when the hardware
platform is changed!' and sue the pants off the vendor for ten times
the loss of your business during the time the machine was down.  You
can even go as far as to claim that the failure made you go bankrupt,
and sue for ten times the value of your business.

Such is the stuff of which hundred-million-dollar lawsuits are made.

Rephrasing the contract to exclude bugs and include only intentional
copy protection won't help, either, as it's anyone's guess what a jury
will decide is `intentional,' and what to me is a `bug' may be
`intentional restriction on operation' to a jury.