From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 08:43:01 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <887036600.23860.193.133.230.33@unicorn.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980209142240.0088b680@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



[Warning: while this may _look_ like just another rant,
there is some technical content below.]

At 07:03 AM 2/9/98 -0800, mark@unicorn.com wrote:
>Jim Choate (ravage@ssz.com) wrote:
>>So do I, and I bet both our incomes combined doesn't add up to 15 minutes of
>>Bill G's and it won't. 
>
>Of course not, because Bill has jackbooted copyright enforcers to subsidise
>his corporation. Without them his income would be dramatically reduced.
....
>Exactly. So tell us how Bill would have become a billionaire without
>copyright?

Gates got rich not by selling good software, but by selling software
very well.  Copyright is part of the process, but it's possible to
sell your product to computer manufacturers with any customization
they need using contracts instead of copyright to make your money.
It's also possible to do copy protection in your software;
games makers do this because they're widely pirated by non-point-source
attacks (kids, mostly) who are hard to track down and sue,
unlike major computer manufacturers who are easier to find,
both to sue if needed or to provide support for.
Copy protection was one of the things people hated about Lotus 123;
I don't remember Excel or MS-DOS ever having it.

When I've used expensive commercial software on Sun computers, 
it often needs to be registered with the machine serial number, 
or used with a floating license server, and refuses to run without it.
PCs don't have built-in serial numbers, but they probably would
if Gates had insisted on it early enough.  Because of copyright law
he didn't _have_ to use technical means of copy protection,
so the Copyright Enforcers have saved him money - but they've
also saved us the aggravation of dealing with copy protection wares.

If you _want_ a serial number on each PC for your product,
dongles are an available option.  They reduce portability somewhat,
but software like Banyan Vines networking uses them on its servers.
So even the fact that IBM and Mr.Bill didn't install one doesn't
stop you from using them - and as anti-crypto law goes away,
uncrackable dongles are becoming easier to make (I don't know if
anybody bothers, though.)
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639