Re: Copy II Plus would be illegal today

[wbdesnoy@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

In article <B844284F.36E6%tim@buffnet.net> you wrote:
: Sheez ... now I can't even play simple games without having the CD in the
: drive at all times

Sure, but this soft of protection existed in the Apple II days.  I have a
game for the IIgs which requires disk 1 to be in the drive, even if it is
installed on the hard drive.

: Too much protection, IMO... it infringes on my ease-of-use as a legal user.

I agree, but a salesman looked at me as though I was a criminal for suggesting
that these copy protection schemes were absurd.  I explained that such tactics
were used in the past, on the Apple II and Commodore 64 and such, and the
protection was usually cracked.  He claimed that is was to prevent casual
copying, but I don't buy that.  People really ought to know that duplicating
software without the publisher's permission is illegal (except for backups, and
maybe other provisions), and the notion of a casual criminal is absurd.  So in
the end we have a form of spyware (forced registration), legitimised by
protecting intellectual property rights.  But I don't trust Microsoft, which
probably explains why I avoid their products.

: I vaguely remember some sort of "copy card" that was available for
: Apple IIs.  Does anyone know what it was, what it did, or how it
: worked?

If you mean hardware copy protection, it is common to this day.  If you mean
hardware to 'deprotect' software, I seem to recall an advertisment in Byte
(1984ish) which claimed to copy the contents of memory to a floppy disk, and
some sort of bootloader would put the program back into memory later.  I am
guessing that the card would only work for programs which were loaded into
memory completely.  Programs like AppleWorks would not work.  Granted I do
not think that AppleWorks was copy protected (I keep finding manuals for that
program, but never original disks), but that should give you an idea.

Byron.