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From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Copy protection: A marketing analysis
Message-ID: <1157@killer.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Jul-87 05:12:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.1157
Posted: Sun Jul 19 05:12:16 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 20-Jul-87 00:36:41 EDT
References: <207@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 40

in article <207@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM>, denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) says:
> 3. Customer loses the gizmo and needs another one: How do I tell this guy from
> a clever pirate trying to sneak in the back door? In fact I cannot, and my
> reaction to this is to tell him to search harder for the gizmo. I may lose
> some repeat sales, but that's how it goes. This is more than made up by the
> fact that my product is virtually unpiratable.

Wow. You are really a cool marketing dude, y'know?

Obviously you haven't been inside The Computer Clutter (my back room, with two
walls covered with workbenches and shelves, and about 2 feet of printouts
piled beside each chair alongside moldy old pizzas and fermenting 7-Up).

I'm still searching for the dongle to the last gizmo'ed program I got (which
was a horse-betting program that costed $9 at a clearance sale). Last I saw,
the package was in the bottom of the steel bookcase, but apparently the dongle
fell out somewhere, 'cause it weren't there.

That is NOT a very good track record. One dongleized program, one unusable
program. It does NOT put me in a good mood for buying any other donglized
program. Especially when manufactures have such sh*tty attitudes... "well,
sh*t-fer-brains, you'll have to buy another copy of my great program, huh?
That's what you get for being such an ignorant stupid dirty pirate thief
SOB!". Very disturbing to a normal legall user....  for example, a friend lost
his MicroSloth "C" manuals when moving from Georgia to here. Call
Microsoft.... "I'm sorry, but we do not ship manuals" (leaving unsaid the
phrase "dirty pirate thief SOB", but you could hear it in the overtones). He
eventually ended up copying it from his place of employment...  took him three
hours to copy those huge manuals. 

The rule of thumb in retail is "the customer is always right". That's why
Sears will refund your money cheefully if you bring it back to them, no matter
for what reason. Sure, they get ripped, occasionally, but how many people do
you know who'd go to a store that said "you're all dirty thiefs trying to rip
us off"? Very insulting to the average Honest Schmoe....

Eric Green   elg%usl.CSNET     Ron Headrest: A President
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg      for the Electronic Age!
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191      
Lafayette, LA 70509            BBS phone #: 318-984-3854  300/1200 baud