Re: New Copy Protection Methods?

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On Sep 23, 2:19 pm, e p chandler <e...@juno.com> wrote:

> My point was that software is no longer protected against copying, but
> it has been intentionally crippled in some other way. Recovery disks
> are specific to the computer that they were created for. They can't be
> used to install the operating system and other software on a number of
> different models of computers. IMO this is an "anti-piracy" measure as
> much it is a means of restoring a system.

Oh it's protected alright - most commercial software requires license
keys which are difficult enough to obtain it prevents most of your
potential customer base from using your software illegitimately.

And that's really the point of it isn't it? Make copying incovenient
enough that only a small percentage of the market bothers and you've
done enough.

Back when the PC market was still expanding and Microsoft were still
competing with Apple for market share, Microsoft software was easy to
copy. It made commercial sense to leave it that way too - a cheap PC
and an illegitmate copy of DOS/Windows made the Microsoft platform
much more price competitive than their closest rival. Of course now,
the market is at saturation point, and the "losses" associated with
piracy are more visible on the bottom line of a company whose market
is not expanding by 20% every year.

Ironically, MacOS X is one of the few pieces of critical commercial
software that has no protection in it at all. In fact, Apple don't
bother making it very difficult at all to run their software stack on
a standard PC, and running a "Hackintosh" has become something of a
geek sport. Of course, they're unlikely to do anything about this
anytime soon, since it's free advertising and exposure of their
platform to people who otherwise might not have any, and in the end it
sells more Macs, which is exactly what that product is intended to do.

In the extremely unlikely event that MacOS becomes the worlds most
widely used operating system, the only way direction their market
share could go is down, and you'll be sure that if that day comes,
it'll become as annoying as Windows now is with regards to copy
protection ;-)

Matt