[computer-go] How to prevent Copyright violations?

[Don Dailey]

Hi Chrilly,

My first program REXCHESS probably would have made me a reasonable
living for a few months,  but it was not copy protected and I sold very
few of them.   Years later I lost the source code and the program binary
itself.  But when I mentioned this on the CCC list, several people
volunteered to give me a copy of MY OWN PROGRAM.   I was referred to a
site where you could get just about every chess program for free.  And
there it was, all packaged up for free.

I think I sold about 50 copies in Europe but I found out later that half
the population had a copy (or so it seemed to me at the time.)

It is a shame that you can spend thousands of man hours and your
creativity on something like this only to be treated with such
disrespect.  

But realistically,  it is extremely difficult to protect a program as
you know.  The executable is right there to look at with any debugger.
Some forms of copy protection are a real pain for the end user.  

Since this is how it is, what is to be done?  I don't think there is a
reasonable software solution - there will always be criminals to take
away what is yours.

I think the best you can do is value added stuff.  Something like
regular updates to users who purchase.  I know that's not much because
the average user is relatively casual.   I am an example, I want to have
a strong chess program on my computer but I don't care if it's the very
latest or best.   I think programs like "fruit" have killed the chess
economy and I don't know how a chess programmer can make a living.

It would be nice to think of an innovative way to make it possible to be
a professional programmer but I don't know what it is.

I have a palm GO program that has made some extra "spending money" for
me.   You must purchase a registration key that I send out to the user
when PalmGear tells me.   It has a simple hash protection scheme and
it's easy to break with a debugger.   I know it has been successfully
hacked, but I have no idea what effect the hack has on my sales.   It
has made a pretty good chunk of money - but it was spread out over a lot
of time.   Not nearly enough to make a living but probably enough to pay
for my time developing it.   

- Don
 


On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 08:08 +0200, Chrilly wrote:
> >
> > In practice, I recommend not to worry too much about copying. Consider
> > pirated copies as free advertising. Offer something extra for the
> > regular users who have paid for their stuff. For example, access to
> > mailing lists, web forums, extra features, and so on.
> >
> I do not see what I can offer to the users of a chess- or Go programm which 
> convinces them to pay when they get it for free from a download. Especially 
> as a single-programmer, in case of a greater company like ChessBase this 
> might be possible., E.g. by using the server.
> 
> > Most of all, don't loose sleep over copying. You can't stop it anyway,
> > and the effort you put in trying, could be better used in producing
> > something valuable.
> >
> I worry a lot. In case of Loop its not my money, but it destroys the 
> economic basis of my work. I have to pay the heating and the taxes from 
> selling game programming (well in the moment this is paid by the 
> Hydra-Sheikh). Its the end of professional game programming.
> What makes me also from the moralic point of view furious is the fact, that 
> this modern hackers have obviously no hacker-ethic. Its another story if one 
> hacks the product of a monopolist who behaves unfair to the users and puts a 
> lot of unreasonable restrictions on the product and makes a lot of extra 
> profit by asking much too much money for the product. Fritz Reul is a 
> programmer who has put many years of efforts in his programm, the conditions 
> for use are fair and now he wants to earn a few Euro for his work. If he 
> counts the Euro per hour he has put in, its even in the best case below the 
> minimum-wage in Bangladesh. But these stupid guys do not know the difference 
> between Microsoft or IBM and Fritz Reul. They are just hacking without 
> reason.
> 
> Chrilly
> 
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