At 04:22 PM 10/13/03 -0400, Sunder wrote: >The luser will think it's worth buying their own copy after getting >addicted to the game. .. >So the rub, is that copies are allowed to be made, but unless cracked, the >copies are nothing more than time limited demos.
What's wrong with these things? They're not fraud. >The only way that this could work is if they put up some sort of splash >screen at some point to let the luser know that the program isn't buggy, >but that the copy protection noticed it's a backup. Which trivially eliminates your objections to the user thinking something is wrong. >As usual, the real loser is the original purchaser, because if he >scratches his CD, he's out $50-$70 or whatever games cost today, and he >can't make backups. Yes. The company *should* swap scratched originals to preserve this backup right, but I don't think they're legally required to. And the company won't be around forever, whereas backups can, so the swapping plan is inferior. *However*, as incrementally clever as this scheme is, it is succeptible to a CD dupe program that is bit for bit correct, no? And since the protected software *checks* the CD for the errors, than a CD bit-for-bit copier *must* be able to be written, no? Or is there a problem writing intentional-errors on consumer-grade CD burners? (If so, this is a good marketing tool; if not, this is going to be cracked.)