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From: hadeishi@husc4.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Copy protection: boycott it!
Message-ID: <2479@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 13:19:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: husc6.2479
Posted: Tue Jul  7 13:19:23 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jul-87 06:13:48 EDT
References: <4826@sgi.SGI.COM> <4238@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@husc6.UUCP
Reply-To: hadeishi@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi)
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 200
Keywords: software terrorism, copy protection, South Africa
Summary: It looks like we both get to use South Africa analogies

In article <4289@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) writes:
>In article <2470@husc6.UUCP> hadeishi@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi) writes:
>Can you prove this? Especially in the face of a CP/M market that never
>had copy protection, and an OS/9 market that doesn't have copy
>protection, and mini and mainframe markets that don't have copy
>protection (and do have piracy!), and Amiga software developers who
>don't use copy protection that aren't going bankrupt?

	None of those three systems were "mass-market" systems.
Not CP/M, not OS/9, not Amiga.  Notice how successful OS/9 software
houses are :-).  Again, I did not say copy protection was necessary
on all software.

>All of my EA games (copy protected, of course) no longer boot. Hurray
>for copy protection - it lets you test something out, and only have to
>hassle to keep a working version if you like it. Or it makes you buy
>more copies of software you like, thus making the software company
>more money.

	All of my EA games (copy protected, of course) still boot.
So there.  Even DPaint I (not a game, but copy protected anyway)
still boots, despite the dangerous form of copy protection where
any user who tried to write to the disk could kill the program.

>I hardly consider 25% of the purchase price of a product to be
>"nominal." Especially when I can get a CD or two at the price, and get
>more enjoyment out of it. Likewise the practice of advertising
>something as "only $80" when the price of a useable copy is $100 plus
>a two week wait is kinda slimey.

	EA clearly labels its products with stickers indicating the
form of copy protection.  Many users do not need to get unprotected
copies.  Note that DPaint II IS copyable, it simply requires a "key
disk" (which is certainly an improvement from the DPaint I days.)
However, I admit that copy protecting DPaint is probably unnecessary.
Still, I would not liken the practice of using "key disk" copy protection
to that of supporting the Apartheid regime in South Africa or
causing millions of deaths of human beings in death camps.  Note
that until recently IBM sold computers in South Africa.  Did you
boycott IBM during this period?  I hope that before you start
throwing insulting moralistic invective about (as you do below)
you look to yourself first.  You may live in Berkeley, but I live
in a coop in Cambridge (and I lived in Berkeley last year), so there! :-)

>Gee, by the same logic, I ought to buy software with known, nasty bugs
>in it, as it'll only cost me a little hassle, and it'll keep the
>company in business. After all, the hassles of working around bugs are
>similar to the hassles of copy protection. And two weeks lost on a
>deadline because your tool died and ate a disk isn't any longer than
>two weeks waiting for a new copy of the protected disk. Thanx, but no
>thanx.

	There are MANY tools out there with known, nasty bugs in them,
and I would still buy them and use them.  It is highly unprofessional
of the companies that put them out, but if they are useful enough
I would buy and use them, and, yes, prepare for the bugs.  Computers,
even with perfect software are prone to disaster, and unless a
company has an ingrained "fuck the consumer" attitude (like Atari)
I would continue to patronize them, knowing they are doing their
job.  You are like the parent who will never be satisfied until their
child is getting straight A's and never talks back.  Everything must
be convenient for YOU, or you get all upset.  I feel this attitude,
however righteous, is actually destructive and divisive.  You would
be the one fighting Gandhi in the Congress Party, saying that the
British should be fought with guns, not nonviolence.  Gandhi said
that the British were human beings and should simply be corrected
from their bad behavior.

>*Should* have headaches added? Nothing _should_ be made harder for the
>user to use on purpose. I'll concede that adding headaches to games
>and other graphics demos isn't nearly as nasty as adding headaches to
>tools. But why do you consider programmers editors different from
>mass-market tools? Doesn't look like you are considering the view of
>the people who have to use them. Could it be that you use programmers
>editors regularly, but not other tools? After all, since the cost is
>about the same, and the sales on programmers editors is so much lower
>than other tools, it would make more sense to copy protect them than
>other tools.

	You are looking at it from the coldly economic point of view,
whereas I am considering the behavior of the human beings involved.
Programmer's editors need not be copy protected because programmers
tend not to pirate software tools.  They are also fewer and farther
apart making it more difficult for piracy to occur.  They also tend to
realize the value of the tools and thus are willing to pay for them.

	Also, in my coop there are several people who have Macs
and who use a copy-protected version of Word all the time.  They
don't even blink when asked to insert the key disk.  These are
non-computer-people, just ordinary students who need to use the
machine to get the work done.  Not one of them has even suggested
that they find the key disk scheme "morally repugnant" or that
it makes Word "unusable."  Unlike you and I, they are not computer
technocrats, they are simply users who need to get the job done,
and Word does it for them.  This is not to say that Word SHOULD
be copy protected, just that it doesn't seem to make it
"unusable" in the eyes of normal people.  Your position, I maintain,
is not that of the people, but that of the technocrat or "power user"
who wants things done HIS way, and any company that disagrees or
uses a different technique (which does NOT, I assert, make that
software "unusable") should just "go out of business."  This is
much more representative of a terrorist approach than the
rather mild forms of copy protection/unprotected versions for $20
techniques used by both Borland AND Electronic Arts (ironically enough,
since Borland began as the great champion of unprotected tools,
whereas EA has always protected its software, and yet now they
have virtually the SAME policies in this area.  To me, this is evidence
that the policy is a reasonable one, and certainly isn't overwhelming
evidence that those companies deserve to "go out of business.")

	Again, I should note that Word has some major bugs which cause
the thing to bomb REGULARLY.  Other people have lost their entire
thesis because they did not back up their work on another disk.
So I tell EVERYBODY that you MUST back up your work, or risk losing it.
This can occur even if the software is flawless.  The woman who lost
her whole thesis was not using buggy software, she just somehow
formatted the whole disk (probably the disk was corrupted and she
hit the Initialize requester button).  So ALL computer tools are
unreliable and you must guard against blow-ups.  So does this mean
Microsoft should be boycotted?  I don't think so.  They are clearly
concerned about the bugs and are doing their damndednest to fix them.
Big programs have flaws.  Big companies put out big, flawed products.
Little tools can be flawless, but they are little.  VMS was frozen
with the documented buglist in the thousands.  Do we boycott DEC?
If DEC (like Atari) just had a "fuck the user" attitude, I'd say
YES!  But they don't.  Of course, the same argument can be made that
games can go bad, so they shouldn't be copy-protected.  My counter-
argument is that games have a limited lifetime of use, and thus
it is unlikely that you will play a game until you kill the disk.
(Obviously you have Mike, but I haven't, and I don't think most
consumers do.)  Kids tend to get games, and because they don't have
much money, they tend to pirate them.  Without copy protection
I think it would just be a lot easier for kids to pirate them
and many more would.  Perhaps this is incorrect.  However, it is
no reason to advocate the killing of a company.  I note that
EA has a much more effective copying scheme than most (i.e., many ][
games could be pirated by simply using Locksmith 5.1 or something;
EA's games in general were resistant to these techniques, thus
I believe they tended to be pirated much less.  And thus EA
made more sales.  And thus EA is still alive, able to support its
creative people, and other companies, perhaps, are not.)

>Yes, we all agree that we want a glowing, vibrant software industry
>etc. However, your assumption that the software terrorism (thanx to
>RMS for that phrase!) and guilty-until-proven-innocent assumptions of
>copy protection are needed for that to happen seems bogus. Until I

	Come on.  It is well known that kids pirate games like there
was no tomorrow.  Kids don't have the resources to buy the amount of
games they pirate, even if they were only $25.  These kids are
guilty, there is no doubt about it.  I am sure that the EA copy protection
schemes (which, by the way, are nowhere near as nasty as that used
in games like Silent Service, which not only was copy protected but
tended to die very rapidly.  EA copy protection is quite reliable,
i.e., it does not shorten the life of the game disk unless you try to
write to it, and EA games DO NOT WRITE TO THE MASTER DISK) have
thwarted all but the most hard-core pirates.  I recall in my old
kiddie days in LA that most of the pirated games were NOT EA games,
and that said something about the effectiveness, if not airtightness,
of their copy protection schemes.

	Again, I am not including Amiga software in this.  Because
not enough kids have Amigas, piracy is probably a minor problem for
Amiga developers whether or not they use copy protection.  For
mass-market machines, piracy IS a big problem, mainly because of the
nature of kids and their budgets.

>we don't care how much trouble they have, so long as we make $$'s at
>it. I resent the first implication, and find the second morally
>repugnant.

	If this were the attitude, then I would also find it
morally repugnant.  However, there is a cost/benefit ratio:  EA
(again, I have to use EA since I know about them) DOES care how
much trouble the user has (and this varies, of course, from
developer to developer - - - I should also point out that EA
is composed of hundreds of people, it is not a monolithic
"company".  Dan Silva, for example, is particularly conscientious about the
usability of DPaint.)  However, they feel that for games, most
users do not find the copy protection to be a problem.  I find
this is generally true (as noted above).  For tools, people
find it to be a major problem (especially when the tool is
unbackupable.)  So they remedied that, not only by making the
disk that comes in the box copyable (but with a key disk scheme)
but by offering a completely unprotected version for the people
who felt very strongly about it (but putting in a $20 hit to
make sure that only people who did feel strongly about it, like me,
for instance, would go to the trouble of asking for it, and thus
reducing the number of unprotected copies to the people who needed
it and would likely not make illicit copies of it.)  Borland, as I've
noted TIME AND AGAIN, also uses this strategy.  This is a responsible,
reasonable, and effective strategy.  Of course, it may be overkill
for the Amiga, which has such low sales (relatively) but who can
say whether the Amiga might not take off at some point as a consumer
machine?  I would certainly not work for a company that had no
respect for its customers; however EA is not such a company.
I don't see the evidence that would convince me to boycott EA;
this would amount to "assholism" (as Stony might say :-).

				-Mitsu