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
