Message-ID: <376@dual.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Mar-84 08:59:35 EST
Article-I.D.: dual.376
Posted: Thu Mar 22 08:59:35 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Mar-84 20:25:38 EST
References: <304@cdi.UUCP>
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 26

Unfortunately, I have nothing to offer in the way of schemes. But I also am
looking. I have heard about any number of copy protection schemes and I
like none of them, in particular, guys who do nasty things like create an
artificial bad sector, or half step the drives. One of our vendors (for
a Word Processor that runs on the UNIX System) has devised some sort of
clever installation scheme, which depends on the customer calling the
vendor when he is doing the actual installation. An unreadable file is
then unscrambled, with the aid of unique keys supplied by the vendor
over the phone. They copy gets installed on the system with some sort of
information which makes is unique to that machine - the same installation
procedure cannot be run on another machine, nor can that copy be moved
to another machine. This also makes backups impossible - a backup restores
onto the system will NOT run.

I don't think that any scheme can be completely foolproof, especially if it
is compatible with mass production (if you make copies, why can't someone else?)
but I would love to hear some ideas on this....



	    Mats Wichmann
	    Dual Systems Corp.
	    ...{ucbvax,amd70,ihnp4,cbosgd,decwrl,fortune}!dual!mats

  It now became apparent (despite the lack of library paste)	 
  that something had happened to the vicar;	[ Edward Gorey ]