Re: Hardcore Computist Magazine online...

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Byron Desnoyers Winmill wrote:

>On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, vector wrote:
>> Textfiles.com depresses the all-loving crap out of me, because I can't
>> keep from reading those "I remember when" articles about late 80s, early
>> 90s computing, and I miss that time so desperately.
>
>Likewise, but I was lucky and had the opportunity to enjoy the
>experience until the late 90s.  :-)  Yet, unlike other people, I was
>trying to break the copy protection to improve mine.  But I never had
>much luck.

You make an excellent point--that though much has been written
about de-protection and the alterations to disk format to copy protect
them, very little has been written about the methods used to create
the protected disks in the first place.

Some of the early schemes are quite simple, and can be created
merely by patching DOS and doing an INT.  Others, particularly
the later, more sophisticated schemes, required complex low-level
disk writing code to create.

Many protection schemes were actually the products of third-party
software houses who marketed them to (primarily) game publishers.
I'm sure that most of these houses considered their protection
methods and disk creation methods trade secrets, and took pains
to keep them private.

It is also interesting that, while the DMCA makes circumventing
copy protection a violation, it does not rule out _creating_ copy
protection schemes.  ;-)

So, here is a fun game:  create a disk which does something
trivial, like print "Try to copy me." on the screen, then release
it for others to try to normalize it.  As long as the copy protection
is expressly characterized as a game, does the DMCA have any
applicability...?

This is an interesting application of free speech.  I am clearly
free to create any "game" I choose, and if playing the game
involves understanding and removing copy protection _by design_,
then how can this be prohibited by law?  In other words, if the
intent of the "protector" was that the protection be disabled by
the user, then where is the illegality?

-michael

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