Software protection scheme may boost new game sales
Companies are using a new software protection system, called Fade, to protect their intellectual property from software thieves. Fade is being introduced by Macrovision, which specializes in digital rights management, and the British games developer Codemasters. What the program does is make unauthorized copies of games slowly degrade, by exploiting the systems for error correction that computers use to cope with CD-ROMs or DVDs that have become scratched. Software protected by Fade contains fragments of "subversive" code designed to seem like scratches, which are then arranged on the disc in a pattern that will be used to prevent copying. Bruce Everiss of Codemasters says, "The beauty of this is that the degrading copy becomes a sales promotion tool. People go out and buy an original version." (New Scientist 10 Oct 2003) <http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994248> steve
On Saturday 11 October 2003 04:38, Steve Schear wrote:
What the program does is make unauthorized copies of games slowly degrade, by exploiting the systems for error correction that computers use to cope with CD-ROMs or DVDs that have become scratched. Software protected by Fade contains fragments of "subversive" code designed to seem like scratches, which are then arranged on the disc in a pattern that will be used to prevent copying.
The C-64 headbanger comes to the 21st century! Can parameter patches be far behind?
Bruce Everiss of Codemasters says, "The beauty of this is that the degrading copy becomes a sales promotion tool. People go out and buy an original version."
"Stupid fucking game! <toss> Next!"
Yawn... This is no different than any of the copy protection schemes employed in the 1980's on then popular home computers such as the commodore 64. Hindsight is 20/20 and recalls, all of these were broken within weeks if not months. "Nibbler" copiers and other programs were quickly built that allowed the breaking of all of these systems. All sorts of "error" sectors, duplicate tracks, half tracks, extra tracks, extra sectors, non-standard sized sectors, tracks written at different speeds, erroneous checksums, hidden data, and other sorts of weird bits were employed. All were broken. None survived the ages. In the end, the companies that employed copy protection only managed to piss off customers who lost their only copy of the software, and created a market for the copiers and crackers. The crackers won, the software companies lost. Few of the companies of that era are still in business today. CEO's, Vulture Capitalists, and others who have an interest in such schemes would do well to invest some time in learning about that time, and the results, for their investments, and dollars will go the same way... the way of the brontosaurus, the trilobite, and the dodo. Let them try, if they wish to burn their money. As far as I'm concerned, I'll vote with my wallet as usual and only run open source, free software. If the moronic kids at whom these titles are aimed have the $50-$70 per title to waste on self destructing, flavor of the month games, they are certainly free to spend that money to their heart's desire. Not a dime from my wallet will wind up in their pockets - except perhaps indirectly: the next time I buy my next burger, "no, I don't want fries with that, no, I don't want to supersize it," my $5 eventually makes a small contribution to the salary of the burger flipper, which in turn is applied to the purchase of said game. :) I've not read the said article just yet, but from that direct quote "as the copy degrades..." I can already see the trouble with this scheme: their copy protection already fails them. They allow copies to be made and rely on the fact that the CDR or whatever media, will eventually degrade, because their "code looks like scratches..." Riiiiggghtt..... If you can make one copy, you can make many, and you can certainly store the ISO in compressed form on a normal CD to make more copies later. CDR's are what? $0.20@ these days? Hell, you can even get one of those virtual CDROM programs to mount the CD's as if they were CD's, and store the ISO on a hard drive, or DVD-R instead. Hard drives are already in the 250-500GB range these days. So their scheme is already flawed and doomed from the start. It seems to me that people that engage in treating their customers like theives to begin with lack a vital ingredient for making money: common sense. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of /|\ \|/ :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\ <--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech. \/|\/ /|\ :Found to date: 0. Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD. \|/ + v + : The look on Sadam's face - priceless! --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, Steve Schear wrote:
Companies are using a new software protection system, called Fade, to protect their intellectual property from software thieves. Fade is being introduced by Macrovision, which specializes in digital rights management, and the British games developer Codemasters. What the program does is make unauthorized copies of games slowly degrade, by exploiting the systems for error correction that computers use to cope with CD-ROMs or DVDs that have become scratched. Software protected by Fade contains fragments of "subversive" code designed to seem like scratches, which are then arranged on the disc in a pattern that will be used to prevent copying. Bruce Everiss of Codemasters says, "The beauty of this is that the degrading copy becomes a sales promotion tool. People go out and buy an original version." (New Scientist 10 Oct 2003)
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participants (3)
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Roy M. Silvernail -
Steve Schear -
Sunder