>Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 08:31:11 -0400 >From: Andrew Stiller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > When passenger screening >was first instituted at airports, back in the '70s, I swore I'd never >fly again. Even wrote my congressman. Guess how many months that >resolution lasted.
Guessing: 26 years (i.e. from ca. 1975 to the end of 3rd quarter 2001)? As long as they seems unnecessary, people complain about locks. When the bank is robbed, then people ask "How come they didn't lock up?" Only two years ago I had correspondence from a Stateside colleague who was infuriated with airport identity checks inside the US. I should dig up the e-mail and ask her if she still feels that way. Returning to the point: I, too, dislike copy protection. OTOH, my experience of the music software industry during the last two-and-a-half decades has repeatedly been that it's the non-CP software companies who die fastest. Hence the relevance of my previous comments. If CP will keep a company alive longer, than that is not necessarily such a bad thing. To those wishing to cite Coda as a counter-example: for years Finale had a very effective copy-protection in the form of its manual. Not unbreakable, but inconvenient for pirates while convenient and even helpful for license-holders. The CD format was also reasonable CP (until CD burners became more wide-spread than diskette drives). So, I think it's fair to say that Finale has had some kind of copy-discouragement scheme in place for most of its existence. >Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2002 18:47:14 -0400 >From: Dennis Bathory-Kitsz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >At 06:30 AM 7/10/02 +0900, Richard Walker wrote: >>What's the big deal? You go to their web page, input your information and >>get the magic number that opens up the program. It's not that onerous, and >>it's not nearly as ugly, say, as the dongle that Logic makes you attach >>before it will work. > >In both cases, you're depending on the company to stay in business. So are >your archivists, correspondents, and clients. But even with non-CP software, you depend on the company to stay in business. What do you want to do with all your ancient "Deluxe Music Construction Set" and ConcertWare and documents? The newest computer that will run either is probably a Mac SE or some Atari from the 80s. These models are getting harder and harder to find and will one day be irreplacable (even that TRS-II you've got in storage Dennis... it too will go to hardware heaven someday). I grant that CP'd software ages rapidly once it is no longer possible to get a replacement authorization, but once you factor in the shorter average life of CP-free companies, the cards are more equally stacked. Basically, anything relying on computer software or hardware is transient. You want long-term reliability? My recommendation: paper. Even dumping to audio formats, while showing somewhate greater longevity than computer software, is not going to last as long as the Rosetta Stone. But we had this discussion over on CEC not so long ago. >Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 06:29:39 -0400 >From: "David H. Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Alan Smith wrote: > schnipped > >You mention saving the file with a "saving out" feature which means that >you get some number and then on your other machine you have to enter the >number before you can save your new edits. And then you have to >remember to do it again before you can bring the file back to your first >computer? Now if you DO save your file to a floppy from one computer >and then find that the floppy is unreadable on either computer, can you >still work with the copy of your file which is still on your first >computer, or does making the file portable somehow cripple the first >computer's version, just in case you are a nefarious criminal type that >might actually be running an engraving sweatshop off of one copy of >Sibelius? If you save a file to floppy, and that's the only current version of the file, and the disk becomes unreadable, than you are screwed no matter what software you are using. To that extent, the example above is pretty irrelevant. In any case, the "Transfer Saving..." option applies to the *application*, not to any particular copy of any particular file on any particular machine. It is not the "making the file portable." Sibelius simply has a feature allowing you to transfer software authorization from one machine to another (without having to call the mother company). It is the software authorization that enables saving. Period. If you have a file on one machine and the authorized software is on the other machine, copy the file over. Period. [Are people still using "floppies"? Sheez, I thought they went out with the Afro.-] I prefer Cycling 74's practice of simply giving a second authorization to a licensee on request, on the (reasonable but generous) assumption that many users will have a desktop machine for home/office/studio work and a PowerBook for the road. Of the various CP schemes I have encountered, C74's use of PACE Challenge/Response is the most reasonable one I've come across. The Sibelius transfer-of-authorization scheme, while permitting a user to switch between her desktop and laptop (and, indeed, any number of machines over the course of time), doesn't make it convenient. Finally, >Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2002 20:41:39 -0400 >From: Dennis Bathory-Kitsz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >I have always been philosophically opposed to protection because it treats >me as if I were a criminal -- guilty until proven innocent by the my ID >papers. My government can't do this, so why should some collection of >corporate dumbbunnies get to do it? Civics 101: "Innocent until proven guilty" applies in criminal law. The Constitution (incl. Bill of Rights, etc.) limit what the Federal Government can do. None of this has anything to do with relations goverened by civil law. "Corporate dumbbunnies" get to do tons of things "the Gu'mint" isn't allowed to. Case in point: urine testing (even if rulings on this this have changed since _Steal This Urine Test_, the court treatment of cases regarding this topic make it clear that government and corporations play to different rules). Long-windedly yours, Peter --------------- <http://www.bek.no/~pcastine/Litter/> --------------- Peter Castine | From the Litter Power Thesaurus: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Pink Noise: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | lp.sss, lp.zzz, lp.sss~, lp.zzz~ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
