From: jim@n5ial.chi.il.us
Newsgroups: alt.security,comp.security.misc
Subject: Re: Software Copyright protection devices
Date: 2 Sep 92 18:07:17 GMT
Reply-To: jim@n5ial.chi.il.us
Organization: me?  have you seen my desk?  : -)
Originator: jim@eddie

QUESTION:  is alt.security the right group for this?  somehow, I suspect
not, but who knows....  if this belongs elsewhere, someone who knows where
it should be, please redirect followups there.

In article <1992Sep2.111408.13462@iti.gov.sg> wangw@iti.gov.sg
(Wang Wei Jun (CC)) writes:

>I am looking for information about designing software copyright protection 
>devices. As I understand, there are two type of protection:

>  1. A hardware device that connects to host's parallal port and
>     do a challenge-response from time to time

don't use this --- you'll find you have lots of hostile users, if you even
manage to GET any users to buy the blasted thing (I won't be one of them).
I believe this was largely abandoned for this very reason quite some time
ago.

also, if you do decide to do this, you have to make sure that your device
doesn't conflict with *ANY* other product/service/whatever in existence.
otherwise, you risk breaking something else.  some of the time, btw, this
does happen, and two different copy protection devices lock each other out,
breaking both programs.

also, plan to provide free replacements for people who have a license
but lose your little adapter (you can't expect them to pay for your mistake,
[your mistake being using the blasted thing to begin with] now can you?).

>  2. For networked workstation, the protection software constantly
>     broadcast a signature to the network and try to detect the
>     same signature.

you really don't trust your users at all, do you?  well, in that case, do
you honestly expect them to trust *YOU*?  personally, I demand that a
vendor trust me to some degree, and if they don't, and someone else offers
the same type/quality product, guess what.....  by forcing users to contend
with the hassles you plan to cause them, just to prevent them from pirating
your work, you not only alienate them because of the major hassle your
software is (or can be) for them to use, but you also alienate them because
you are directly implying that w/o that protection, they would steal your
software.

people who want to pirate your software are going to find ways to do it
with or without your copy protection schemes.  people who are honest,
and will pay for your software, might just buy someone else's product if
they feel that yours is just one more stupid adapter on their parallel
port, and more hassles that they don't need/want.  I know I fit in with
the second category --- if I know a program pulls stupid stunts like this,
I'm not going to use it, but if it's something I need, is a high quality
product with good support, is produced by people who don't insist on
accusing every customer of theirs of being a thief, and is priced right,
I will BUY it (and if it fails to meet the above, I'll just buy the
competition's).

I have a game program at home that I purchased legally.  it had a really
annoying bit of copy protection built in, and forced you to look things up
in the manual every time you started the game.  I was about ready to dump
the thing from my hard disk, when I found a patch that disables this
so-called feature.  nobody else has or ever will get a copy of the program
from me, and as I've stated, I paid for it legally.  yet, I'm still forced
to use a patched version if I'm to tolerate it at all.

btw, I will never buy another product from this particular company again.

later....
   --jim

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