Copy Protection

** This is not warez thread **

Sometimes I wonder why software companies bother using X protection when some nasty underground hacking facility will find a way around it in a few minutes. Sure its great to try, also sift out a few of the unintelligent people who have no idea, but it just costs the company money to protect the cd's just for some hacker to crack it. The Authentification key was a much better idea, especially if the game sports online play. Valve made some kind of effort having the HL2 gcf files need unlocking using Steam -- which worked. Surely there's gotta be another way to protect software.

This debate occurs frequently, despite the term "debate" my mind is already made up and will never change: Copy protection harms honest users and does not stop disshonest users from copying the game.

There is no known way to completely protect a product. If it can be read into memory to use it legitimately it can be written out of memory to store it illegitimately.

They do it, because often little Johnny whose parents just bought him a computer game, can't figure out how to copy it and give it to his friends. Same goes for the idiot CEO who just bought a software package and wants to put it on his home computer. He can't.

Copy Protection is simply to stop "casual piracy" which accounts for about 50% of possible piracy - when someone buys a DVD and wants to give a copy to a friend - and suddently find their DVD writer can't get around the new copy protection. He's not going to go out and buy a new DVD writer if he can't figure it out. He's just going to lend the disk instead.

Due to copy protection, "casual copying" now amounts to less than 5% of piracy.

+BlackD

A quick search on google for "Copy protected cd's" Brings up pages and pages of different, legitimate, software that can get around copy protection for $9.95. Most of them have full featured 30 day trials. Online Activation is probably the best way to stop such CD giving, but it creates a hell of a hastle for legit end users who dont have internet connections, or simply caus the software wont work through their router (Steam). Tis a sad sad world.

In some case the "Protection" is bettter than the "GamePlay" part in the game, I've seem many lame game protected with StarForce....

Warrior Within, and more recently, Fantastic 4 (quite a cool game IMO) would not even be recognised in my drive.

Whatd i do? Take it back, yes. got it swapped first time.

it still didnt work.


I oppened up my drive and fiddled with the lasers till it did work :P YAY :)

I'm assuming these disks used some form of disk corruption to protect themselves.. how stupid :/

Sounds far fetched to me. I don't think you did a thing.

Isoclean has a lot to answer for, not only can it be used to clean class 4 lasers, but it gets the person using it high as a kite so they think they're some kind of laser wielding sci-fi warrior!

One yed Jack, You talking to me?

Actually, go find an old CD drive. Open it. Get under the circuitry near the laser and find a variable Resistor.

Tweak.

:P



heh, of course Itried cleaning it first.

Actually, I did have a slight problem- DVD drives have two VRs and i wasnt sure which one did what :)

"fiddled with the lasers", wow that's technical, I'm amazed it worked!

Becky: I could recommend plenty of safer alternatives to Isoclean if you want to retain braincells. Try Jedi Academy on the PC for a start.

CD readers can be tweaked to read DVDs if you know what you're doing.


That is because StarForce protection can be burnt using standard CD burning equipment (no expensive specialist CD pressing stations required) so any Joe Bloggs and his dog can make a game and put copy protection on it.

Of course, StarForce is completely incompatible with my DVD burner drive, so any game that has it I won't touch anyway.

Except for TrackMania Sunrise, which is worth keeping a spare LiteOn CD burner around for ;] LiteOns can read anything. Bless 'em.

I think the best way of copy protection without effecting honest users are cd keys.

If your cd key isnt a valid one, you cant play online (and singleplayer but that can be cracked)

Bet you that can be fixed by a quick tweak of the laster VR...

I'd rather stay away from 'tweaking' my brand new Pioneer duel-layer burner, thank-you-very-much! =]

I'm much more partial to FIXING THE GAME using a crack.

Send it here, and if i break it, i'll buy you a new one.

Yeh, that's great. No. =]

Pleeeeeease????

I think the idea is to make piracy so inconvenient that the only person who has time to mess with it is the 14-year-old in the basement, who has no money anyways.

I think the idea is to make INSTALLATION so inconvenient that the only person who has time to mess with it is the 14-year-old in the basement, who has no money anyways.

FYI, that VR you are referring to is knows as a potentiometer (or pot. for short).

Nope. Take a guess at how many people (here even) that have had their honestly acquired cd key randomly used by someone else and then shared so much that it was later banned from use and made worthless.

Yeah, i know. I couldnt think of the word earlier.

A tad embarasing considering I used to sell components for a living :)

So what? What could they possibly be gaining by prevetning casual piracy? More people playing their game? I mean sure, if you've made a bad game, that might be a valid point, but intrusive copy protection schemes even protect good games (like Dawn of War and the Winter Assault expansion for instance).

I think the idea is to make it such a hassle playing on the go, that the only person who has the time to play - without having to constantly carry 20 or so CD's around with them - is the 14-year-old in the basement, with neither job or money, who doesn't have to take his entire game collection with him everywhere he goes, because someone might give a copy to their friends.

I think the way around this is for sponsors to advertise their products in a game. Like the FIFA soccer games where advertisers pay to advertise their products around the side of the pitch. If it is done this way then piracy won't hurt so much because the mass distribution of the copied games will ensure that the sponsers get more value for money (and more sales). And if the creators of the actual game design a contract in such a way as to receive a small percentage from the products sold then everyone is a winner.

In fact the game could even be given away for free and the game designers would still generate a huge income from their sponsors.

It is pointless trying to fight piracy. Instead, why not use it to your advantage?

maybe the solution is a bit more esoteric (and unlikely) in that in the future money becomes worthless as we all live in harmony with our basic resources and requirements supplied by the community as a whole and then people can make games for fun, and everyone can enjoy them for free like works of art. Do I sound like a hippy? well right now I wanna get rich making games, so there.

I've been thinking of a way to make a "good" copy protection. As we all know, any copy protection can be hacked by even low-skill beginners, because its mainly about knowing a little ASM, and looking for that conditional JMP/JNE/JE statement in the dissasembled source.

However, with self modifying source, a way for the program to alter its execution in runtime would be a much better solution to this. Sure, this can be worked around by good crackers using Softice or similar runtime debugger/dissasemblers.
However, it will me that much harder. Usually they go through your program step by step, looking for breakpoints such as:

- Strings: "Congratulations!", "Registered to:" and so forth
- Function Calls: Editbox reading and API hooks
- Step through dissasembly, manually looking at program flow and jump points.

However, if the code that you enter into an edit box contains special runtime bytes thats decrypted and inserted into the flow of the program, a jump point could be generated on the fly, and standard "offline" dissassembly would be near impossible, and only good crackers would stand a chance.

That said though, Im sure this technique has several holes, and I would have to think more about it before trying to implement it. However, I would be very interested in your thoughts and constructive critique.

Customer buys with a credit card; You compile his/her personal copy stating clealy that it is licensed to him/her at startup; You Molebox the package; Send it to customer; Customer is very careful not to let it get copied and spread because it will be obvious where it came from.

Assuming Molebox is secure enough, that's probably the best you can do without it becoming more effort than it's worth. I would maybe release a few broken "cracks" and let them flood the warez sites so finding a properly working pirate copy is too much hassle, also. :P

No it won't. First of all this is a technique often used by Virii to avoid detection by Virus software, and is only mildly successful. More worrying however is Microsoft "blanket" approach to security (you can no longer send .exe files across MSN), which will likely mean that any program that uses self-modifying code, is likely to be flaged as mallicious, and thus not even executed.

Also self-modifying code is one of the more difficult (read: impossible) types of programs to debug and hence, maintain in the long run. No point of making your job harder due to any real or imagined threat from th3 w4r3z d00dz.

No it wouldn't. If you have to decrypt something "on-the-fly" it means you have to provide a key and algorythm. So you might aswell not encrypt it in the first place. Besides, that fact that "only good crackers" stand a chance is a poor comfort, since there are thousands of good crackers around, with nothing better to do than break your elaborate scheme.

The more elaborate, the bigger the challenge, and there's nothing a cracker likes more than a big challenge.

I still don't get the point tho'. Does anyone actually pirate any software they're prepared to pay for? On the other hand, I was quite prepared to pay for HL2, until I learned of the rather draconian copy protection scheme (and yes, I'm aware you all think steam is the second comming).

I maintain that sensible pricing and trust in common decency is the most useful way to combat piracy. The most effective way is to make software piracy socially unacceptable. No technological measure you can think of is going to make a difference. It's simply going to inconvenience the legitimate user to the point where he/she goes off looking for cracks so he/she can use his/her legitimately purchased software on his/her own terms.

I just don't bother to buy games anymore. If the copy protection stuff is just there to make me annoyed. Companies are entitled to make games you can't fully enjoy and I am entitled to not buy them.