[luau] the end user price for lousy copy protection schemes

[MonMotha]

Luis aka Rigpa wrote:
> 
> I have seen numbers thrown around of how much buggy software costs end 
> users.  But one number I have never seen is how much copyright 
> protection schemes costs end users?  For example, you legally buy some 
> commercial software package and the key number is ether lost, stolen, or 
> is burned on a fire.  Or the key number has problems, or a bug requires 
> you to re-enter the key number every time you use the package, or the 
> 'original disk' is in 5.24" floppies, or the lisense management sheme is 
> difficult to set up.
> 
> How much does it costs the end user to have to deal with with all the 
> crap associated with copy protection?  I bet that's an good selling 
> point for OpenSource, because if there is one thing that pisses me off 
> is not being able to run a software I paid for because of some chessy 
> copy protection scheme.
> 
> Luis.
> 

I can personally say that I've lost a CD-ROM drive to the copy protection on 
SimCity 4 (Safedisc II?).  A gear was physically stripped as the drive was 
obviously asked to do something it couldn't actually do (the drive should ahve 
refused, but needless to say obviously a spec was being violated).

In terms of being required to use original disks...I've had a couple disks 
become unusable after being scratched.  The problem is twofold: 1) Copy 
protection generally reduces the scratch tolerances of a disk by doing ugly 
things with CRCs, and 2) If I had been able to make and use a copy, I would ahve 
done so, saving the original and allowing me to make another copy.

--MonMotha