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coolabah · 02-03-05, 07:46 PM

I have been teaching my young kids that it is NOT alright to copy music CD's from friends, it is NOT alright to download songs on the internet. Problem is it seems everyone else's kids do, their parents (who seem typical of a large number of individuals nowadays) seem to have some sort of logic different to mine.
Now this whole piracy/punishment topic is a curly one- I wish I knew the right answer. All I know is that like err- the oldest profession- piracy has been around for a long time and I suspect will continue to be so as long as there are individuals who feel that just because they can, they will . Who of you are old enough to remember the early PC days ? My (of course legit) copy of Quattro Pro (on a 5 1/4 inch floppy of course) would use a flag when it installed itself on your hard disc as an ant-piracy measure, so once installed you could not install again from that floppy until you "uninstalled" from your hard disc and the flag was cleared on the floppy. All well and good until you get a HD crash or courrupted .exe file ..... Then everything went "no piracy measures just enter code on CD case"....now full circle to online activations for PC programs. I am afraid that although the idea of a software thief's PPC hard re-setting itself causes me an embarrasing level of amusement, I think that may leave the developer in an uncomfortable legal position. Bit like the house burglar who sues the home owner when they trip over the garden hose. FWIW, I don't currently own Pocket Mechanic but still plan to buy it when I can afford it. Why on earth would I be worried about the code enclosed that would never execute on my machine ? As for the wasted 50 bytes of my RAM, now that's another story.....

( :) )

02-03-05, 07:46 PM	#39 (permalink)
coolabah Aximsite Minor League Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Syden-en-ney Posts: 229 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	I have been teaching my young kids that it is NOT alright to copy music CD's from friends, it is NOT alright to download songs on the internet. Problem is it seems everyone else's kids do, their parents (who seem typical of a large number of individuals nowadays) seem to have some sort of logic different to mine. Now this whole piracy/punishment topic is a curly one- I wish I knew the right answer. All I know is that like err- the oldest profession- piracy has been around for a long time and I suspect will continue to be so as long as there are individuals who feel that just because they can, they will . Who of you are old enough to remember the early PC days ? My (of course legit) copy of Quattro Pro (on a 5 1/4 inch floppy of course) would use a flag when it installed itself on your hard disc as an ant-piracy measure, so once installed you could not install again from that floppy until you "uninstalled" from your hard disc and the flag was cleared on the floppy. All well and good until you get a HD crash or courrupted .exe file ..... Then everything went "no piracy measures just enter code on CD case"....now full circle to online activations for PC programs. I am afraid that although the idea of a software thief's PPC hard re-setting itself causes me an embarrasing level of amusement, I think that may leave the developer in an uncomfortable legal position. Bit like the house burglar who sues the home owner when they trip over the garden hose. FWIW, I don't currently own Pocket Mechanic but still plan to buy it when I can afford it. Why on earth would I be worried about the code enclosed that would never execute on my machine ? As for the wasted 50 bytes of my RAM, now that's another story..... ( :) )