A History of Copy Protection 536
GamerGirll1138 writes to tell us Next-gen has an amusing walk down memory lane with their history of copy protection. There have been some crazy schemes over the years to ensure that you paid for your software, everything from super-secret decoder rings to ridiculous document checks. "With bandwidth expanding and more and more games publishers exploring digital distribution, there's little doubt that we're entering a new phase in the history of copy protection and those who would defeat it. What's more, the demand for games as a chosen form of entertainment has never been higher. All this considered, it's impossible to believe that the cat-and-mouse game of piracy and copy protection will not reach new levels of intensity, with new technologies deployed on each side, and that some of them will surely create new hurdles for even those who simply wish to purchase and play the newest games. Ah, for the heady days of the code wheel."
I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ultimate copy protection: (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand I think this will eventually reach a breaking point and these normal people (who are the paying customers) will stop putting up with said crap. That will be an interesting development for sure.
Copy Restriction (Score:5, Insightful)
New form of RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Execution Restriction (Score:4, Insightful)
Even when used legitimately, a computer is going to make at least one copy of the program/data, first into main memory, then into the various levels of caches.
Re:Dongle Almighty! (Score:3, Insightful)
At the very least the USB dongle would have to do something sort of calculations to provide authentication using a cryptographic authentication system. Certainly you could build dongles with appropriate computing power, they quickly become expensive. And you still have to deal with the possibility of simply cracking the game to bypass the check and skip to the "yep, authenticated" portion -- the USB device would have to provide some bit of data that was necessary to execute the machine code but different from use-to-use, which is a non-trivial problem all on its own.
Not to mention that no one would just use the USB block device driver -- they would all require that you install slightly different, conflicting drivers to read their USB dongles.
Grinding disk drives. (Score:4, Insightful)
This prevented someone from just copying the files on the disk directly. But there was an application that just copied the image and got around that nonsense.
Things haven't really changed. I don't understand why they just don't give up. This has been repeated many times, but it's true. All they're doing is inconveniencing consumers who actually paid for the product.
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you have problems with any copy protection, as long as it exclusively relies on "trust". Because of course copy-protection must raise hassels. There is some method of verifying you can run the software, and such methods can never be 100% accurate (there are lemons/shorts/ruination/reformats/internet outages/etc).
The only other alternative would be a locked down OS (far moreso than Vista) with some sort of anti-modding hardware and a hypervisor. Even that would only mostly work, but it would work well enough to eliminate any other inconviences.
Re:The real problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The irony... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The ultimate copy protection: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the point of a reasonable price as copy protection is that your average man on the street likes to see rip-off merchants get ripped-off themselves. If you had someone come to your door, offer to clean your windows for "two-fifty", and then ask for £250 when the work was done, not £2.50, would you have any problem with writing a cheque for £250 and immediately cancelling it, thus getting whatever work was done for free? I don't think that most people would, and it's getting those 'most people' to not see the game publisher as the rip-off merchant, and thus be willing to pay the price asked for what they're getting, that reasonable-price-as-copy-protection is aimed at.
If someone offers you a deal that is clearly a rip-off, do you just politely decline, or do you try to twist the deal so that you get to do the ripping off? Quite a lot of people would do the latter - that's the spirit behind quite a lot of piracy, and threatening people that they'd better accept your rip-off deal or else isn't going to make that spirit go away - not appearing to rip them off will. The fool and his money are easily parted - the rest of us don't like people who try to demonstrate the former of us by doing the latter.
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Strongly disagreed
It doesn't matter that it takes 1 cent to press a disk. How much did it cost to make the software, and how many disks did you sell? If your development cost was 10 million dollars, and you sold 10 million copies, you would have to charge at least $10 per disk to break even -- simple math.
It doesn't matter that it's an infinite good either, and that at $10 per copy, every sale after 10 million is profits. They are still entitled to think that they are providing you with a product/service that is worth at least $10 and that is what they ask you to pay them for it. Easy example is a $50 game that you spend one month playing for about an hour a day -- it's not an unreasonable price to ask -- if a customer isn't willing to pay that price, they shouldn't buy the game. If consumers show a trend of "getting the game by hook or by crook", then the publisher will add copy-protections.
It's really that simple -- it comes down to simple human nature. As long as there exists theft / shrink / infringement (whatever you wanna call it), there will be copy-protection. It's up to the govt./courts to step in and define our (consumer's) rights clearly to make sure our rights don't get trampled on by these copy-protection mechanisms.
No mention of e-books? (Score:4, Insightful)
One reason may be the incredibly elegant system of copy protection they used. You unlock the book with 2 pieces of information - the name and credit card number you used to buy the book. Now... someone might not think twice about throwing up a bunch of serialz out to the general public; but publishing their name and credit card number to a site that caters to thieves? Kinda loses it's appeal.
Maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe people don't mind that e-books cost just the same as their paper counterparts. Maybe computer geeks would rather lug around paper versions of Cryptonomicon than read it off their PDA's, or iPhones. Maybe someone's already cracked the
If so - let me know. I'd love to transfer my existing e-book collection into plain text, or possibly loan copies of some titles to people I wouldn't necessarily trust my credit card number with. I can give copies to my mum, and she could give the same copy to someone else - but she'd have to give them all my credit card info for them to read it which makes her much more discerning.
There are other little aspects to it as well - take a look at how e-books are sold to see why they aren't pirated and see if you think it could be applied to larger software offerings.
Re:DO NOT WANT (Score:2, Insightful)
You were closer to correct the first time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Via Steam I've bought legit copies of Half Life 2 and the 2 episodes after having started playing a pirated copy because I decided I actually wanted to throw them some money for a quality game. I know Steam has some kind of protection, but it completely stays out of my face. I don't have to type anything in or remember to not lose a CD key... it just downloads and there it is.
Other companies that make you jump through more hoops in order to access games that interest me less, and don't respond to criticism - instead doing the whole "faceless corporation" thing... they can go take a long walk off a short pier. Fuck them. If I can bypass their protection then I will, because I god honestly do not care about them.
So yeah, if you want people to not pirate your games, make it so they want to pay you (There was another article I saw before about ways to add value beyond the media/content itself so that you're actually offering a better product than the free pirated copy, doing things that way works too). If you try and make it so they *have* to pay you, it won't work and they'll hate you and pirate your stuff just to spite you. The End.
Re:My company's strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with this scheme is that it works fine when people respect you and your product. Having something popular and suddenly 90% of the potential users will find a warez copy that somebody bought with a stolen credit card. And there is a keygen or whatever it takes to use the product without paying.
Mostly, it is respect and there is damn little of it today. So companies try to force respect and that doesn't work either. Offering a good product at a realistic price doesn't work when people want to make it into a political statement.
Re:Out of print (Score:2, Insightful)
It's true that buying second-hand raises the problem of "How do we know they've destroyed all their copies of the program, when they sell it?", but I don't pretend to have a solution to that.
However, if a company doesn't want to sell a particular product anymore, or doesn't want to sell it to _you_, then... you're out of luck. No company has an obligation to sell a particular customer anything. Righteous indignation on the phone may get them to change their mind, but it's still their mind that has to change in the end - you're not making the decision for them.
It's just a tough break - and an example of how freedom to act operates.
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I lose the key, that's my fault.
No, it's a deliberate game breakage by the vendor. It's crippleware. It's only human to lose things, particularly things as ephemeral and meaningless as a license number, and to pretend it never happens is dishonest. Your game will die.
The game still theoretically works.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." ~ Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut/Yogi Berra.
Ownership is, by definition, the right to control. If the vendor controls it then you don't own it.
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DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have any proof to back this up? I didn't think so. I helped a friend out with his software company a couple of years ago, and sales were directly proportional to piracy. IE: When cracks on warez sites were fixed, sales went up as much as 70%.
"The market for software is probably much smaller than the software-producers wish. To me, this seems like a problem with the business model and marketing department, to be honest. Social reengineering to secure a market for a product which many people find to be of poor value compared to alternatives is not an effective solution; the problem is not that pirates steal, it's that some users don't see value."
Now you are trying to legitimize piracy. If something has no value to me, I don't download it or buy it.
Everyone I have ever known that has pirated software, has done so because:
1) the software has value
and
2) they don't want to spend money on it.
Re:The ultimate copy protection: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I can do that as a one man company, why can't all games companies?
Because the smaller the company the more they tend to care about not annoying their customers.
Re:Steam is not fine (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly the same stupid reasoning that's used for the #$^%&£! DVD region codes. If I buy a DVD on my vacation in the states, I can't watch it on my player at home, without going through some extra hassles.
Vendors should have no right to put ANY export restrictions on stuff they sell. If they want to play in globally, they should accept their customers may want too...
Re:Steam is not fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have no issues with copy protection if... (Score:2, Insightful)