🚀 go-pugleaf

To: coco@pucc.princeton.edu
Reply-To: m.j.knudsen@att.com


After 10 years of living in the Coco world, my impressions are:
--There was plenty of Coco SW piracy back in the pre-OS9 days,
  but no more than any of the other 8-bit machines.
--Either Commodore or Atari had a rep as the worst machine to
  write games for, piracy being so heavy.
--Games get pirated more than anything else, regardless of machine or OS.
--PClone/MSDOG world still runs on the credo "Only fools BUY software."
--OS-9 world was surprisingly free of piracy.  Thank heavens,
  since there was no way to copy-protect anything under it that I
  ever heard about.  I'd guess the improved attitude stemmed from
  so many OS9ers being or hoping to be software authors.  I know
  MY attitude tightened up a lot as UME neared completion!
--Based on the first and last stmts above, I get offended when
  anyone singles out the Coco community as a bunch of pirates.

>I guess it can happen.  When we started Sub-Etha, we individually serial
>numbered every piece of software (on the disk and lable) we sold and
>registered them (we shipped all the software, even orders taken by other
>dealers).  So, we knew who had what and could always ask for a serial number.

>We started up in 1990, near the end years of Rainbow, but we never "saw" the
>problem of piracy...I'm sure some of our programs got passed around, but no

Ed Hathaway started selling SW (Second City) about 1987, around a
year before we brought out UME.  In all that time up to now, he
reported 1--3 incidents of "customers" calling with technical
questions on programs (not UME) that they hadn't bought.  Ed just
kept a record of names and addresses, not serial numbers.  If your
name wasn't on his list, he'd say "What's your name & no, I'll
call you back."  Usually this got a CLICK!  Oncer some dope even
gave him that info, whereupon Ed offered to sell him a fresh copy
right on the spot and he'd drop the matter.  Instant sale.

But it's noteworthy Ed only "saw" this a few times.

Tech support and free/cheap upgrades help a lot to combat piracy.
These were lacking in the early days of home computing, and rarely
apply to games, so the whole picture makes sense.
These also are lacking for outa-print, "obsolete" stuff like BASIC ROMs.