re how to the disks copy protected in article apr csus edu kschang sfsuvax sfsu edu kuo sheng kasey chang writes there are several types of copy protection and the point is to make sure the user is using a legitimate copy the simplest and virtually fool proof way is for the program to somehow fixate itself to the machine it was installed on some sort of checksum serial number whatever so a copy put on a different machine not installed from original disks will not work okay so what do you do if some part of the machine presumably the part on which the code number or whatever that the program has fixated itself upon goes bad you replace that part and now your program won t run because it s on a different computer this is of course assuming that the program uses something in rom like the bios serial number maybe and not a disk based code number obviously if the drive goes bad you ll be reinstalling the stuff anyway i work in a computer lab which is part of the university microlab system we have the wonderfully fun task of maintaining well over a hundred machines both pc and macintosh as well as administering a network of over next machines i personally am concerned only with a small lab with ten pc s and ten mac s i m not the manager but help him with admin often imho copy protection schemes of any sort are nothing more than a major headache for the legitimate user anyone who wants a copy of your program and doesn t care about legality will get a copy period pirate board or no pirate board i too have friends who blatantly and quite successfuly hack copy protection schemes practically in their sleep let s consider what goes on in our lab almost daily we have at least one machine down sometimes several due to some goofball screwing up some setting or other on a piece of software admittedly we being students mostly are not the world s most efficient and effective network administrators but we try keeping even the twenty machines that are partly my responsibility even vaguely looking and acting similar to the average user and maintaining behind the scenes consistency is a real headache but not so bad a headache as trying to remember twenty different folder locations of norton utilities when some guy trashes his disk often we have hardware problems at peak business times and have to do some parts swapping to get stuff working temporarily well i ll cut to the chase and quit boring y all the point is often we have to re install software and copy configuration files etc from machine to machine by far the easiest way we have found to do this is to get one machine working exactly the way we want to then copy the complete setup of this machine to the other nine of that machine s type this ensures us that for at least ten minutes we have ten identical machines to work with having them networked simplifies this considerably as our major packages wordperfect windows etc are all network versions and thus only one copy to mess with often however we need to install a package requested by some instructor to one some or all of the machines for a special project this is usually a hand written or shareware etc program similar to what i believe the original poster was asking about the few we have had with copy protection schemes have caused nothing but nightmares for us to maintain in short don t waste your time with a copy protection scheme it s sort of like outlawing guns the criminals will get your program anyway and you will only be hurting the legitimate honest user write a good user s guide and tech manual whatever else for your program please do this regardless of whether you copy protect the thing and only distribute the manual to licensed users jack the price to cut your losses but please take a cue from the major companies who can admittedly afford the costs of illegal copies far better than you and don t burden the legitimate user with a copy protection scheme sorry for the tirade but it s been a long day here mark s underwood ee student university of kentucky lab assistant boyd hall microlab a tiny little division of uk library microlabs e mail msunde mik uky edu the program is definitely backupable if restored to the same machine depends on the programmer don t use a disk drive characteristic if the user did an upgrade to the machine he she should reinstall all programs any way no document look up no disk wear and tear i did not say that the originals would allow only one install the user s conscience should do that i know i ll get flamed for this but with the increasing number of casual users who either unknowingly or don t care about the software copyrights it s the truth i have friends who ask me for copies of my latest games all the time and when i refused they went after somebody else casual pirating is becoming more of a problem some sort of copy protection will discourage the casual copying i ve seen what some of my friends dug up somewhere latest and the greatest games all cracked within days of actual release you know how many bytes you need to change in x wing to disable the quiz two yes two and don t ask me which ones they are determined pirates are unstoppable given enough time but their results do not spread that far since pirate boards are not that well known and easily tracked once found by authorities it is the casual pirates that the copy protection is determined to discourage what i believe the companies should do is implement the above plus a special patch once the user registers that loudly exclaims upon bootup registered to xxxxx address city state zip and disables the above two benefits encourages registration cuts down on pirating and makes it more traceable because if the patch s registration message is encrypted it will be quite hard to change and therefore provides a stable trail of who allowed their copy out of their hands and thus violated their license agreement this way the legitimate users who does not register will experience minimal discomfort who does major upgrades to their computer frequently as only problem they have is they won t be able to restore to another computer the registered users would have proven they are legitmate users and therefore gains full rights and can restore to different machines on the other hand the software company now have a record of where this particular copy is supposed to be if this user s copy was found to be somewhere it was not supposed to be we know who has broken their license agreement of course a hacker can break that eventually but that s not the point is it kasey chang
