ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 1988 ^^^^^^^^SOME COMMENTS ABOUT DISK PROTECTION: ^^^^^^^^^^HOW TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF BOTH ^^^^^^^^^^^^^SOFTWARE AUTHORS AND USERS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^opinions of Charles Good After I laid out over $40 to purchase WRITEREASE, I discovered that this disk software is heavily protected and not copyable using any of the commonly available track copiers. I am thus unable to make any backup copies of WRITEREASE, even though the law allows me to do so. I am now stuck with my one and only program disk which is only guaranteed for 120 days. I have to hope that my kids don't get hold of the disk and finger it. I am reminded of the cartoon in which the child has a computer disk in one hand and a magnet in the other. The kid says to his father, "I thought you said this was magnetic media." I have to hope that I don't turn off the power to my external drive with the disk still in the drive, as this sometimes messes up the disk. Much of the software I buy I expect to use on a regular basis, and as such I like to put on my ramdisks. In particular, one would think that a word processor would get regular use. WRITEREASE is advertised (TexComp 1988 catalog p. 28) as "designed especially with owners of the CorComp MEMORY PLUS products in mind. With the MEMORY PLUS RAMDISK capability the complete WRITEREASE and and its SPELL CHECKER can be loaded into the ramdisk for lightening speed access!" This is NOT TRUE! Only the spell checking dictionary can be put on a ramdisk. Because WRITEREASE is protected, the program itself can only be loaded from floppy in drive one. Because of these reasons, I hate disk protection. Unlike modules, disks are fragile and can be destroyed. If I had known that WRITEREASE was uncopyable and (contrary to advertising) could not be completely booted from ramdisk I would not have purchased the product. If I can avoid it, I will not again purchase protected disk software. I understand and respect the problems authors of copyrighted software have with piracy, and I understand the reasons why such authors want to try and limit copying of their product. I am not a pirate. I don't hand out copies of my commerical software to all my TI friends and I don't put copies of commercial software I purchase in my user group's library. I do feel, however, that there are good reasons to use my legal right to backup my disk software. Ultra protection, such as used with WRITEREASE may actually discourage people from purchasing the software, resulting in decreased rather than increased income to the software copyright holder. Here is my suggestion to commercial software authors who wish to prevent unauthorized distribution of their product. This suggestion will allow legitimate owners of to freely backup their software and to install this software on ramdisks or hard disks. Sell the software on completely unprotected disks. Hide a secret serial number somewhere on the disk buried within the code of the software in a location known only to the software author (eg. 5th byte of 3rd sector of LOAD program). Each serial number can be referenced in a master list to the original purchaser. Every time the disk is copied, the secret serial number goes with the copy. If copies are passed around, eventually through the grape vine a copy will get back to the software author. Software authors should make the existence of this secret number known to all purchasers, and perhaps offer a reward to anyone who provides the software author with an unauthorized copy. Such a secret number would be very difficult to locate. You couldn't find it by just looking around with a sector editor. It would look like part of the program code. It would take a very smart disassembler to separate the serial number out from the rest of the program code. The threat of such a secret number would, I think, discourage legitimate purchasers from giving away copies of their software. Great Lakes Software already uses this system. When you purchase disk software from them at a computer show you can actually see this protection system being installed. They don't just hand you a disk. They first ask your name and address and than take the disk, put it into a drive, and do something on a keyboard before handing you your disk. Presumably they are adding the identifying code number that their literature states is on each original disk. Both software owners, and software authors have legitimate rights to protect their investments. I believe that my suggestion would protect the rights of both sides while at the same time making the software easier to use and thus more likely to be purchased. .PL