[MikkOwl]

An employer friend bought an English designed winch control program which he runs on concerts to enhance lighting effects... an interesting feature of the program, was in having to be online to install it as well as having to be online to uninstall it. In between those two situations however, there was no necessity to be online to run the program.

Interesting arrangement. Being online to install it is not a big hassle. I don't think I would put up with the 'online to uninstall' part though. Once I pay for it, install and activate it, that's it - it is mine. Don't want any more hassles (including DVD checks, which are noisy, impractical and discs are not the most durable thing). I have hard drive errors and other things that can be random, and not being able to uninstall something we bought is a preposterous idea. Still, that system is mild enough to be tolerable as long as it is patched out later (else the software could be permanently broken if they stop supporting it and take down their authorization servers).

If it weren't for the pirates, there would be no need for protection methods eh?

True. Although there's a lot of things to be said about it.

(A copy here is defined as being a copy that functions).

The cost of manufacturing a copy of a medium that is digital is zero. The cost of distribution is also zero. In a market economy, this means supply is infinite. And that the market value of such a copy is zero.

Before the apperance of fast computers, large storage medium and the Internet, it was a good business model to offer the service of producing a copy and distributing the copy to consumers. But having a business model where one is selling the service of providing one digitally made copy (which costs nothing) and distributing it (again, does not have to cost anything) is maybe not the most innovative or well thought out anymore.

In order to try to keep the old business model of selling the copy and distribution, supply must be choked somehow. But one can also attempt to coerce people into choosing only their service. Two main methods:

1. Attempt to make it more difficult to produce a copy (what we are discussing mainly in this topic).
2. Threats of, and carrying out: violence, robbery or kidnapping in any combination (by a third party, nearly always the state) if people choose to handle the task of producing a copy and distribution themselves instead of choosing the offered service.

The second needs legislation in order to support it specifically. There are smaller things which are fairly innocent where the stake-holders of the business model run campaigns for the public that attempt to make people believe that copyright infringement of any kind is not copyright infringement, but theft (a different crime, where someone is robbed of something. Like stepping into a game/movie store and literally taking a DVD case with print and disc inside and walking out - the store then deprived of those items).

Personally I think (and many, many, many others) that if someone does something good for you (like a favor), you should return the favor. That means give back to the people who gave to you. Also, people can do it for purely selfish reasons - trying to secure 'more of the same' enjoyment in the future (gaming studio can go bankrupt or try making other less interesting games in order to profit more). I think these two are big reasons people choose to buy officially distributed copies even though they have plenty of alternatives. It is harder to always do so when the officially distributed version is less attractive/appealing (in the form of it just performing worse and being inferior to other versions).

Anti-copy schemes are morally completely OK. People are trying to sell something they made and are just trying to limit the supply through those means to raise the market value. It will usually not limit supply much but will make the product on offer (possibly) crappier if care is not taken. I.e. requiring a registration code and going online to check it once to enable the functionality is agreeable for nearly everyone, but being constantly online as a requirement when it is not technically required is nonsense for many. So it would be to have to enter a new reg key each time software is to be used or a movie watched.

Crap. Long, long post. Pardon everyone.