From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jun 17 13:50:26 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA06621 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 13:50:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA06615 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 13:50:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA19623; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 13:41:45 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199706172041.NAA19623@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Burn CD not allowed copy To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 13:41:44 -0700 (MST) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, fedi@ms13.hinet.net In-Reply-To: <19970615103102.EG39497@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Jun 15, 97 10:31:02 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Get used to the idea that any form of ``copy protection'' is basically > meaningless in the computer area, since somebody else will always find > a way to work around it. If worse comes to worse, there are people who will cheerily help other people dump RAM images of already executing programs and the code preamble necessary to cause them to load and reset the registers and program counter, then resume execution. So even if you do come up with a workable copy protection scheme, people will just grab the image after it has been started and called the verification code. If you insist on copy protection, you should simply silk-screen "I am smarter than you" onto the CDROM... at least that way it will stay around when some cracker says "Oh no you're not!", unlike non-physical software claims that you are smarter than him (ie: copy protection). Of course, if you really wanted to make it inconvenient for a cracker, build a dongle. This will make it inconvenient for your users as well, but you can bask happily in the knowledge that for every user who can't use your software, neither can 10 crackers -- who would never have paid you a dime anyway, since people prevented from stealing something don't go out and buy it because they can't steal it. 8-P. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.