[Joe Forster/STA]

Hey DABHand,

Let me rephrase what I want to say and be extremely concrete.

In China, there are complete factories that burn warezed CD's. Do they ask kids to download warez? No, they manage it themselves. Do they ask people to crack stuff for them? Doesn't matter as cracked stuff is available on the Net. Do they have problems with copy protected stuff? Of course, not. Are they making EXTREME profit with this? Oh, hell they do!

Your neighbor has a few kids. He doesn't want them to break his game CD's. Does he download warez from the Net? No, he hasn't even heard the word "warez" (yet). Does he know about the copy protection? Well, not yet, but as soon as he asks around and tries to back up his game CD's, he definitely will. At the end, will he be able to backup his stuff? Oh, hell he won't, not even after lots of struggles. Will the game publisher help him with sending him another copy of the CD,after his kids did manage to break the original? Yeah, for about 1/4-1/2 the price of another original.

Copy protection hurts the honest customer, the very person that all companies are making software for. Copy protection does NOT hurt people who try to make money from warez. And circumventing the copy protection has been an intellectual challenge for some people, just like "climbing the Himalaya, only for the damn reason that IT IS THERE" - and this is completely independent of warezing and pirating stuff...

Joe