From: hchong@netcom.com (Hoi Chong)
Subject: Re: Key-disk... It's back again!!
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 01:09:45 GMT

From article <1af5csINNalf@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, by dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil):
> 
> In a previous article, hchong@netcom.com (Hoi Chong) says:
> 
>>It is quite obvious that you are not a serious gamer, one that buy many
>>games each month.  I have bought close to a hundred PC games so far, do 
>>you know how messy my table is with so many manuals and key-disks?  Some
>>games even demand both key disk AND manual protection! 
>>
>>The way I see it is that I paid my dues, bought enough games, shell out
>>enough hard-earned money, THAT I SHOULD NOT BE BOTHERED WITH KEY DISK
>>AND SUCH!
> 
> Agreed. Completely. You should not. But if companies don't do this, you
> will not have that hundred PC games...or at least not good ones. The reason
> that companies use protection on their games is because of pirates. Is it
> fair that those of us who are not pirates should be forced to go through
> the annoyance of copy protection? No. But it is also not fair for a company
> to spend a huge amount of money to produce a game, distribute it, and
> discover that soon everyone has it, everyone loves it, and no one BOUGHT
> it! As long as there is piracy, we will have copy protection.

I can see your point about companies protecting themselves.  But the
recent trend is no copy-protection.  Origin, SH, Sierra, Dynamix, etc, 
these big companies have back away from it.  Something must be right.

>>If you have a game that use up up all 640meg, or even 1/2, or 1/10th of
>>the CD, fine, I have to insert the CD each time.  But a 3.5meg game and you
>>expect me to trouble with the CD each time?
> 
> In what way does inserting a CD differ in dificulty that looking up
> something in a code wheel?

You can damage the CD if you are tire or careless, manual is hardware to 
damage.
> 
>>Do you own a CD-ROM drive?  Do you know what is a caddy?  
> 
> No. Yes.
> 
>>1) I have to take out the caddy from the drive, 
>>2) take the current CD out and 
>>3) put it back into its case, 
>>4) take the game CD out of its case,
>>5) put it into the caddy,
>>6) and insert the caddy back into the CD-ROM drive.
> 
> Total time spent: 15-20 seconds. Yes an annoyance. But if it helps to
> retard piracy, I'm willing to spend a few seconds...especially if I could
> have just bought the disk based version and installed it on the HD.

That process, if one is to be careful not to damage or scrach the CD, may
take up to one minute. 
 
> Look...do you lock your house when you leave? Quite an annoyance isn't it,
> having to mess around with the key and such? For a company to distribute a
> unprotected, easily copyable game is like leaving the house unlocked for
> them. Anyone can steal it. If we can stop people from stealing (fat
> chance), they may leave the house unlocked. But not until then.

You lock your house on your own effort, protecting your own property.
But the game companies are making us do their work to protect them, after
we have paid them money.  What is worth, some of these games are not 
worth the diskette they come in.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games