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Mysteries Of The CDRW and Backups Revealed
Talinom writes "Tom's Hardware has a story that details information regarding some of the new (and old) copy protection schemes out there, as well as results from several different CDRW drives. There are a lot of sites devoted to this topic, but Tom's is usually rather thorough."
Wow, looks like I really hit a sore spot. I find it most interesting that first you cover for yourself by claiming that it's for, err, backups (coughBULLSHITcough). Now generally if someone made an argument like that, they've taken the high road and have no need to defend their actions, but then right after that you blather out about how I think I'm a "pinnacle of virtue". Uh huh. Pick an argument Einstein.
Yes, people who break CP are the good guys. They are trying to restore a basic fair use to the purchaser of a product.
I like the link between welfare cheaters, fraudulent insurance claims, and people trying to backup something they have purchased.
In the welfare cheat area, there have not been three or four orders of magnitude as much damage done to the taxpayer by giving $175/month to some liar, or ten thousand liars, in comparison to even a single company such as Enron or MS, which has been on welfare to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Why? They don't pay income taxes. Our subsidy of Bill has sucked billions more out of the Treasury than the bogeywomen of black urban welfare queens, which are mostly suburban myths anyway.
In the insurance fraud vein, insurance companies are the wealthiest, most profitable operations in the world. Most of their profit is shunted off the books, so that the true extent of their rapacity can only be estimated. But I do know people on the inside of claim investigations. There is a ongoing effort to improve the already obscene profits of these companies by denying benefits by means of delaying payment through dragging settlement out for years, so the financially exhausted claimants will surrender. And they do. And the HMO system has been a colossal success in siphoning tens of billions (at least!) away from health care and into investors' pockets.
In no way can fraudulent claims (somehow actually paid!) can match the tens of billions of dollars the insurance companies have stolen from their customers in endless ways.
There is theft, and there is theft, indeed.
Now, having responded to that, copy protection. CDs were distributed for years without CP. And software makers raked in billions, BILLIONS of dollars. Remember also that this scenario happened before, in the 80's. I remember CP on Apple II diskettes that attempted to destroy the diskette drives. For years they tried to destroy "pirates". They failed.
Then they relaxed, and stopped trying to squeeze the last drop of blood from their customers' stones, as it were, and the misery ended. Sales still exploded, and much money was made, huzzah.
What we have here is raw greed, firstly. The second thing we see here is the ongoing attempt to redefine a product as something metaphysical, not tangible such as a CD. The new greedheads sense victory in their PR attempts to redefine property as a spiritual concept. These people are capitalist radicals. They want software on a CD to belong to them, not the purchaser.
I and others disagree, and we can be defined as the conservatives. I am a conservative capitalist. I am arguing for the continuation of centuries of law, in that *I* own the box, the CD, and the right to make a copy of it, reverse-engineer it, set it on fire, or use it as jewelry. It is MY PROPERTY.
To give the radicals what they want will require a police state that is enpowered to reach into a citizen's home and catalog what happens there, ie net checks, software audits, PC's reporting to software tracking databases, ISP's digging into logs for whatever reason, etc. The new rules Bush wants are going to dump everything into a giant warrantless data warehouse that anyone can search -- except customers or defendants, I'd bet.
Now, to address the point of the difference between security and CP. I disagee. The only reason security is absolute and CP is not is because they haven't figured out *how* to make it so. If they do, they will. At first they wanted to discourage casual copiers, but observation shows that a little is never enough when control is the issue.
This is about a new corporate order, not about theft.
Wow, you think enough like me that it's scarey!
Cheers, and thanks for the thoughts.
PS. I thought GWB along with Herr Ashcroft would screw us over, but I never, in my wildest dreams (nightmares) thought it would be this bad. And we all thought that Repubs were supposed to be champions of the Gvmt respecting our civil rights and staying out of our business?! Sheesh!
Thanks man!
Cheers!
And so, because your are the "Gold" standard, we can extrapolate your experiences to the rest of humanity?
I have had CD's fail - I've left them places, I've lost them etc etc etc...
So, one of the first things I do, when I get a new program, is make a copy. 15 years from now, when I need Office 4.3, I'll still have it. It won't be original media, but I'll have it. Same with the Borland Pascal 6 compiler for Dos. Or MS Dos 5 etc.
I own that software, and like bloody hell you'll tell me what I can and can't do with it. This attitude just makes it MORE likely that I'll completely ignore your well-being and ENCOURAGE all my friends to rip your software and NEVER pay you a dime.
So, go ahead, abuse the customer. Perhaps they're sheep and don't care. But take heed, some do, and when you burn your last ounce of goodwill, don't come crying to me.
Cheers!