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From: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga Software Piracy (names, addresses, numbers and pictures)
Message-ID: <1234@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 13-Jul-87 03:20:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: spice.1234
Posted: Mon Jul 13 03:20:04 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jul-87 00:53:42 EDT
Reply-To: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi)
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 49

Keywords:


Re: Amiga Software Piracy (names, addresses, numbers and pictures)

guest@uscacsc.UUCP (guest) (and with good reason, too) writes:

> What follows are three things. A list of the top ten Pirate Boards.  The
> list of commercial software on 1984 and a picture of Mr. Van Kley.  After
> seeing this, all this talk about copy protection vs. non-copy protection
> seems just like bullshit to me.

I'm interested in hearing how some of the software developers feel
after seeing this.  Some of the software on that list comes from
people here on the net -- Infinity Software, Felsina Software, and
ASDG, to name a few.  I have a few points I'd like to make:

1) All copy protection schemes can be broken.  I noticed that Silent
Service was there -- wasn't that copy protected so well that the
original didn't work?  I'll put myself in the position of a commercial
software developer for a moment.  I am now the president of MegaWare,
Ltd.  My entire operation is < 5 people.  Developing some far-out copy
protection scheme will cost me a lot of money, and they're going to
pirate my software just the same.  Why should I copy protect something
if I stand to lose even more money from it?  Dropping out of the Amiga
software market won't help me...there are pirates for every computer.
Dropping out of the market entirely doesn't help me...then I make no
income at all.  Perhaps RMS had it right in the first place.  Maybe I
don't want to make an income from my software, but produce software
for the benefit of other software in return.

2) I didn't see either the Lattice or the Manx compiler in that list.
Perhaps that's because they're unusable without the documentation, and
the documentation is much too difficult to duplicate.  That's the
reason why Borland publishes the Turbo Pascal manual as a small
paperbound book -- It's damn hard to duplicate it in that form (won't
fit in the sheet feeder), and using TP is pretty difficult without it.
Of course, not every application is unusable without the manual.

3) Too bad we don't all have Digi-Views...I'd like to see what some of
the faces behind the message headers look like.

				--M

-- 

Mike Portuesi / Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department
ARPA:	mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu	UUCP: {backbone-site}!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp
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"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...only much, much better"
			--Laurie Anderson, "Lanugage is a Virus"