🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <kYMDBwy00UgXIAx_FN@andrew.cmu.edu> wb1j+@andrew.cmu.edu (William M. Bumgarner) writes:

>> software publishers loose significant portion of sales due to piracy

> I would have to disagree with this; I know of far more people who will simply
>refuse to buy a package that is copy protected-- no matter how high of quality
>it is.

  Publishers probably do lose sales because of copy-protecting their
software (I dislike CP'ed software, because it limits my flexibility
in setting up my system).  However, they also lose sales because of
piracy.  There are two major markets where piracy is a serious
problem: games and education.  Most game manufacturers are just slowly
getting out of the business because it's unprofitable.
  Education is even worse.  Schools (especially public schools, though
universities as well) apparently don't feel obligated to ever buy more
than one (at most!) copies of a program, no matter how many places
they use it.  I used to work for a company developing educational
software; we spent a lot of time working on copy-protection schemes,
for several reasons.
  First, schools like to buy a single copy of a software package, and
then use it freely among all their schools.  (We sold one copy of a
home econ. program, at about $50, to a certain major school district
[50,000 students] and they proceeded to make 1200 copies of it.  They
destroyed them after being threatened with a lawsuit, and agreed to
site-license their various schools.)
  Second, "fair use" (especially in the university environment) is
interpreted very broadly.  I know of some universities which reasoned
"We're teaching these students Lotus 1-2-3.  They should be able to
work at home.  Therefore, we should give them each a copy of Lotus
1-2-3."  I don't know if this still goes on; it was about a year ago
when I found out about this.
  (The company I worked for also gave free previews of their software;
if we didn't copy-protect these, sales would probably drop to zero.)

> There is NO reason to copy protect software; it costs the company sales,
>annoys the users that try to put up with it, and disrupts normal computer
>usage.

  Software meant for home use...probably true.  For businesses, true
in most cases at least; however, I don't have too many problems with a
single-machine license protection method.  (Businesses also tend to be
rather bad offenders, especially smaller ones--large corporations in
my experience are more careful.)

>  It, in no way, prevents piracy-- from the experience of knowing the
>Apple II piracy world in its prime (remember the AE-Pro lines?), it was often
>the case to try and spread copy-protected software as much as possible while
>the non-copy-protected software was rarely distributed.

  The reason the non-copy-protected software was rarely distributed
was because most commercial software was copy-protected!  There used
to be a "computer club" I knew of in a major city near my home town
which specialized in exchanging commercial Apple and IBM software.  I
don't know if it's still in existence.  Copy-protecting a program
doesn't do much to prevent piracy, but it at least helps.  (Educating
people would probably help more.)

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| Anton Rang (grad student) | "VMS Forever!"         | VOTE on	         |
| Michigan State University | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu | rec.music.newage! |
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