[computer-go] How to prevent Copyright violations?

[Joshua Shriver]

And your Go program is greatly appreciated :) I play it almost daily,
and bought it last year. Any plans for a new release? If not no
worries I enjoy it very much  as it is now. One thing that I found
attractive is the price. I would pay for many chess engines to
"support the author" or reimburse them a little for their time. But as
a student I can't afford to drop $50 for each engine. However $10-$15
is more digestable.  Maybe it's a mental barrier. Spending $10 or so
is like not going to the theatre once. Paying $50 is like paying car
insurance for a month. So hopefully I'm not the only person who thinks
like this.

-Josh

> 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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