Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!biar!trebor From: trebor@biar.UUCP (Robert J Woodhead) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Moebius patch (deprotection) Message-ID: <538@biar.UUCP> Date: 5 May 89 14:39:54 GMT References: Reply-To: trebor@biar.UUCP (Robert J Woodhead) Organization: Biar Games, Inc. Lines: 44 In article wb1j+@andrew.cmu.edu (William M. Bumgarner) writes: >> software publishers loose significant portion of sales due to piracy >I would have to disagree with this; I know of far more people who will simply >refuse to buy a package that is copy protected-- no matter how high of quality >it is. This is all fine and good, but the fact remains that it is the publisher's decision whether or not to copy protect, and this decision is based on what they think is right for them. And, btw, they have much better intelligence about the market and piracy than you do. >There is NO reason to copy protect software; it costs the company sales, >annoys the users that try to put up with it, and disrupts normal computer >usage. It, in no way, prevents piracy-- from the experience of knowing the >Apple II piracy world in its prime (remember the AE-Pro lines?), it was often >the case to try and spread copy-protected software as much as possible while >the non-copy-protected software was rarely distributed. There are many reasons to copy protect software. The real question is, does it gain more sales by forcing people to buy it than it costs because people won't buy copy protected software? My personal opinion here is that the dividing line was crossed about 2 years ago, and that now it doesn't pay to use software copy protect (although "decoder wheels", though more annoying in many ways than software protection, are a good idea). The main reason for the decline in copy protection is 1) the prevalence of hard disks and 2) the decline in level of technical literacy in the marketplace. As for your assertion that non-protected software was not pirated, this is an incorrect assertion. In the early days, the situation was so bad with regards piracy that software houses protected software with the expectation of being cracked within 2 weeks of release and fully pirated within a month; the sole purpose of the protection was to protect the program during the critical first month of sales; literally, in the hopes that people would buy it before they went to their next user group meeting. -- Robert J Woodhead, Biar Games, Inc. !uunet!biar!trebor | trebor@biar.UUCP "The lamb will lie down with the lion, but the lamb won't get much sleep." -- Woody Allen.