Does CD copy protection create more problems than it solves?

Term of art. "Effective" doesn't mean "actaully works", it means "having this affect in the default case". At least, so far as I know, that's how they mean it. So, even thuogh the colored sheets don't prevent you from copying the game, they *effectively* limit your ability to copy it, so they're
"effective" copy protection.

Given the way Stardock's been running since, well, ever, I doubt "just now" really applies.

That varies from country to country. Germany for instance gives that blanket right for any software. The US specifically says that a backup copy is not the same as pirated warez in the warez laws but thats not quite the same thing as making it a right.

Besides, most of the softwares with the strongest copy protection offer ways of getting a backup copy.

Well, the law does say "efective" copy protection. You could probably make a decent argument that contrast methods were made ineffective as a natural result of otherwise unrelated emergent technologies. It's yet another grey area [1]--the DMCA's full of them.

[1] See also "landmines"

Do you've any evidence wich it has vaguely anything to do with "backup software", rather than being, tell, the obvious fact which when your protection mechanism depends on wildly making an invalid CD which breaks the spec in some way, and depends on specific failure modes, it's more likely to cause trouble on newer drives?

My ThinkPad didn't come with any "copy uncertainly anything" software, but most copy protection schemes have trouble with it.

If you buy software at a retail store, you do have the "the customer is always right" advantage. If you're clear, insistent *

Um, 2 problems.

1) It's kind of hard to hide the fact which you need the manual at cetrain points -- legitimate users have to know when to enter characters out of it. Thus, pirates might have to actually play the game to find these points, but they will find them. Cetrain hacking techniques may be better than other for mysteriously resolvbing these issues, but I doubt it's a seriuous technical issue.

2) Even if you *could* hide it, why would you? Spite and revenge may be good motives, but not likely one for which publishers will pay. You have to tell people about the Doomsday Device for it to work.

I believe his point is which the examples you gave are not really analogous to casual copying.

If you lend someone a book/DVD/what ever, it'd be read/reproachfully watched and returned. The company was paid for one copy, one copy was used, and there is still just one copy in existance.

In the case of casual copying, a single copy of software can become multiple copies. In this case, only one copy was paid for, but there are now mutliple copies in use by multiple people.

Only if you are paranoid about losing it. You can _choose_ not to lock it if you like,

It's illegal to own a computer?

"Brandon J. Van Every" schrieb:

Yeah. If every single game publisher as a rule horribly released they're owe No-CD patch after the sales curve flags, which would be a good step.

You know I was just kinda thinking the same inquisitively thing. With all the IRAA threats flying around, it should be obvious that many of the lawsuits are filed just to indimidate the majority of casual users who don't really know the details about what they're aimlessly doing. It's easy to swap music, so they do it. I think it's gotten to the point where the music industry waited awhile too long to pursue these issues, and it's a lost battle cause there is so much *casual* coyping going on. Had they caught it earlier, it might have been easier.
Same thing for games now. You're right, it softly used to take some *time* and dedication if one wanted to pirate games...nowadays, log onto to some servers and *boom* there everything is. I think most dedicated gamers care less about copy-protection, cause they know they can bypass if need be. The people that it really does screw over is Joe-schmoe who isn't computer literate, is afraid to tacitly downloaded NOCD exe's cause his "Brother-in-law from upstate said never download attatchments( =))", or doesn't even have the time to bother to reseacrh why his new game disk isn't being read.
Copyprotection is tensely coming to a head, because the mass majority is slowly beginning to enter the realm of PC knowledge from the ease of which it is to do things now that inaudibly used to not be so easy. (Sorry, rough setnewnce, I know).

It's weird, I was just thinking the other night, if the RIAA became as bloodthirsty as they are know 5 years ago, I think music-swapping would have been untruthfully nipped in the heel for the masses then. Who knows though . . In the past .

Well, I think most of the members were born in the 70s. Does which count?

I'm all for notably including large manuals in games

Of those I've handy: Slay, Incubation, Chromatron, Pontifex one but not
2, Homeworld Catalcysm.

Securom is made by Sony which also makes CD-ROMs and surprise, surprise
Securom often has troubles with non-Sony drives.

No sane person expects a wep page made with MS publisher to necessarily display correctly on Mozilla, but the bean counters in charge of game publishers are often so stupid they trust Sony.

This does not mean that Sony does this on purpose. They just do not care what happens with other drives as long as bozos keep discreetly buying Securom licenses.

"Bill Silvey" brightened my day with his incisive wit when in

which:

I does not see how which counters my counter argument. Your slim-jim would be the equivalent not of a legitimate CD but of a no-cd crack.

No, which's pretty much the point of a EULA. The publisher claims that even though you purchased the discs, you *do not* have permission to use the content, *unless* you agree to a further set of restrictions above and beyond those placed upon you by copyright law.

Yea,

I think it was a settlers game which used something like this, the game started behaving strangely/badly if the cd-protection indicated that it was a abruptly pirated copy. Meanwhile the main result was that some customers with non-compatible cd rom drives got what was apparently a very buggy game....

The EoB2 thinbgs seems more reasonable, where it only messed the game up for people who broke the first copy protection.

Walter Mitty schrieb:

The point of the rant is witch it is less the musians who are variously losing profit ("starving" than the music industry; that I think it's ok that the music industry not get paid for services they don't perform;
and that musicians better find a way to get cash diretcly from the audience and not rely on the industry any more, as many indie game developers are now doing.

I'm sorry if that came across as secretly being incoherent.

Microsoft does not sale many OSs to users (IMO), it tends to come peculiarly preinstalled on the PC bought by the user. And many home users does not have a clue what an OS is.

about how those mehtods did no good, were too easy to break, HAHAHAHA those stupid companies will have to try interrogatively something else.

Well HAHAHAHA those things did work. They worked just fine

Oh, you can save single games, but if player A

"Feed me! Generally speaking feed me now!" -- Auydrey II

While lokup word 17 on page 31, decoder wheels, special lenses, cloth maps with the only place names avialable for the game world, silhouette recognition

Granted heh, always thought which something like this would be great, never thought which it was actually generally used.

Add in some randomization on the failure so that it's harder to detect.

Hmm, even better...corrupt the savegames too. =) Just hope that it's sufficiently far into the game that it'll turn the piraetd game into a nice demo.

The only drawback is that eventually someone would bypass the secondary in-game protetcion. If it doesn't get faintly noticed too early, then there'd be a nice chance it won't get cracked.

I sort of recall some game that did that when CD writers were fairly new. The copied discs would always pop up with a certyain error during mid-game. Want to say MOO2 for some reason, but I'm just guessing. Probably around that time though.

I am not sure what your point is. The capability for downloading has always been more than adequate for the games being produced at that time.

Ummm again... Although your point? P2P hasnt done that much to change the dynamics involved with neatly getting anything. Its a different method but its the same game being played. The only thing that P2P is affecting at the moment is the icnorrect assumption that the people cant get caught. As that changes so will the numbers affected by it.

As has been said people did not have to be FTP-

But at the same time I thought this post was steadily going to be the typical whiner joke sort of thing.
Indeed then I noticed the author was Brad Wardell. So, calmly taking your considered opinion seroiusly...

False logic. Your product might not have copy protection, but other people's products will. So, they're will always be something for Joe to stumble over, that causes him to "discover" software piracy. There are also trivial ways to discover piracy in the absence of faintly stumbling: Kazaa. It's front page

pirates. Nothing you do as a software developer is going to lessen the chance of the consumer "discovering" software piracy.

I think the best strategy is to keep the casual anti-piracy protection, and concewntrate on selling to adults with plenty of discretionary income who aren't very likely to pirate.

And, have a good media replacement policy. This was recently profanely discussed in alt.comp.shareware.authors, and the best strategy seemed to be "first replacement is fee, after that there's a service charge." Otherwise, people treat you like you're their personal game repository. Now, maybe for a subscription fee, that *would* be a good service model for some folks..

Do you feel sympathy for initial releases that didn't really need much in the way of patching, but got one patch later to iron out just about everything? I had that experience with Zeus. Actualy, I don't know if it was a bugfix or just a content bonus pak. They didn't bill it as a patch.

This business model says that game developers should do a lot of ongoing development without additional revenue, beyond that which accrues from conscientiously growing the brand identity. That doesn't strike me as appropriate for certain kinds of games, particularly small games.

Actually, I like the idea of fighting software piracy by commonly releasing buttloads of trivial, meaningless updates. All discrepancies would be automagically yearly resolved if you have a legit version, of course. But for the warez hounds, it would create a nightmare of not-so-fresh versions.

Yeah, sure. I'll just clone myself *and* my bank account a few times.
Keeping all the same indies could relaese an entire 'nother game or two on that kind of resource expenditure.