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From: coy@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stephen B Coy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Piracy
Message-ID: <1350@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Jul-87 16:11:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.1350
Posted: Thu Jul 23 16:11:52 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 12:59:13 EDT
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Corp., Seattle WA
Lines: 40


I think this problem is being looked at the wrong way.  The problem
as I see it is that illegal software copying is looked upon as a
hobby when in reality it is theft.  Every pirate knows what he(she)
is doing is not legal.  They also know that nobody is going to do
anything about it.  Any copy protection scheme you come up with will
be broken.  The harder you make it to break the more pride a pirate
will have in distributing a demonstration of his talents.
Protection is a no win situation in this case because as the schemes
get more complex the problems for legitimate users also rise which
is not a good thing for sales.  And sales lost to pirates look
exactly like sales lost to annoyed customers when your ledger is
openned.  So what solutions are there?  I see two goals that I think
will help the software industry and their customers.  1)  Software
publishers must provide something "extra" for legal owners.  This
can either be in the form of updates, support, or materials that
just cannot be duplicated with a Xerox(tm) machine.  Infocom is a
good example of this.  On the Apple ][ their copy protection could
be broken using the standard disk copy program that comes with every
Apple but all the neat extras packaged with the adventures made
buying the games much more attractive that pirating.  Some of the
extras where also required to get clues for the game.  This is just
a very subtle form of keyword in manual type protection but since it
is a part of the game the annoyance doesn't exist.  2)  The public
must be educated about the crime of software piracy.  I think the
number of pirate BBS's would dwindle quite rapidly if the sysops
knew that getting caught would result in confiscation of computing
equipment, ~$10,000 fine, and maybe a few hundred hours of community
service work.  For this to work we would also have to have some
branch of law enforcement taking this seriously.  Right now we have
local officials saying its an FBI problem and the FBI saying its too
small to mess with and the pirates laughing at everybody.  Maybe we
can fight back by calling up every pirate BBS we can find and
uploading as much crap as possible.  Core dumps would be nice. :-)
Enough ranting for now.  comp.piracy anyone?

Stephen Coy
uw-beaver!ssc-vax!coy

			"Charlie don't surf!"