Thoughts on Piracy, Protection and Promises

                An article by Jim Johnston

Before we start, I want to make certain things clear:-

I possess about 1500 discs and around 1000 tapes ranging over
Spectrum, BBC, Dragon, Atari, ST, Sam, Laser MSX, etc.  I do not
copy copyright tapes for the purpose of re-distributing them to
others, either gratis or for profit.  I believe that 'Piracy' is a
word coined by those who steal to cloak their criminal activity in
some kind of respectability. As thieves they should be brought
before the criminal courts of this country and not allowed to use
the 'protection' of the heavy cost of a civil action, which deters
most victims.

Having made these statements, I must now state that I have, in my
collection, a number of items of 'pirate' software ... Now hold
on! ... Let me explain!!

It is my opinion that :-
a) The laws relating to copyright vest in the holder the total
right of control and disposal (temporary, permanent, regional,
worldwide, use specific or unlimited) of his copyright.
b) This control allows him to place his work in the public domain
(free of restriction or charge) and allows him to, subsequently,
remove it back to his control if he so wishes.

Let's come back to the pirate copies in my collection, in relation
to the above.
1.  I have no idea who holds the true copyright to the concept of
controlling a round object with a flat object, to rebound off
small stationary and/or moving objects causing them to change or
disappear, thus increasing the game score.  The earliest I played
was called 'Thro` the Wall'.  It was on the Horizon tape supplied
by Sinclair with the first Spectrums. Since then I have purchased
'Brick Wall', 'Break a Brick', 'Breakout', 'Batty', 'Arcanoid',
'Revenge of Doh', 'Adictaball', etc, etc. All of them claim
copyright, yet all are the same concept.  In spite of the variety
of presentation, some of them must be 'pirate' copies.

2. Pacman was, I believe, an early coin-op game copyright to the
Atari Corporation, yet in my collection I have Gobble a Ghost,
Ghost Patrol, Zukman, Gulpman, Hungry Horace, Pacland, Pacmania,
etc, to name but a few. Most of these games do not originate from
the company who appear to be copyright holders, yet they all claim
copyright to their game.  In fact, under copyright law, they must
be 'pirate' copies.

3.  Last but by no means least, in this short list, the adventure
created in the early 70s for computer users by Crowther and Woods
(originally known as 'Adventures') which we know as Cave
Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure. Now no one can dispute that
the copyright to that piece of software rests with these
gentlemen. Especially since it was years before they had polished
it to their satisfaction. In spite of that 'detail', there has
been spawned a rash of copies (each claiming copyright) over the
entire computer range, from Public Domain (at no cost) to œ35 for
the privilege of owning what must be regarded in law as 'pirate'
copies.

I wonder does it follow that I am in danger of being prosecuted
under the criminal law of this country, for knowingly receiving
stolen goods.

Protection is something that software companies assure us they
only employ to reduce 'piracy' in order that they can make a fair
profit and you can have your software as cheaply as is possible.
Now anything that helps to reduce 'piracy', I'm in favour of
(especially if it reduces costs).

I will give you my experience of protection, briefly!

My youngest grandson learned to read quickly, by watching his
older brother (age 5) playing the computer. When the tape failed
to load, again!, we all chanted 'Tape Loading Error, Rewind Tape,
Randomize Usr Zero, Load Quote Quote, Enter, Start Tape'. We had
to do it so often that, as I say, he learned to read. But tapes
were slow and our friendly software people decided that under the
guise of speeding up the loading time they could produce a tape
that would be difficult to copy 'back to back' using two tape
decks.  The extra noise would not filter out and cause the tape to
crash.  Unfortunately variations in tape recorders caused original
software to crash and hang with a black screen until the machine
was reset.  No more 'tape loading error' etc to educate my
grandson. Nice one protection. I had more than my share of these
tape failures and on returning one such tape to the shop, was
asked to wait while they tested the software on their machines.
They loaded it on the fourth attempt then informed me they would
not exchange a working tape as it encouraged 'piracy' (they
obviously thought I was a potential thief!). I referred them to
the Trades Description Act and the Sale of Goods Act but the owner
told me to sue him or take it up with the supplier. I wrote to the
supplier explaining what had happened and enclosed the faulty
tape. To this day I have not heard from them, but I am still
hoping!

Then came the 'Lenslock'. Great! Back to normal loading problems!
I can handle that.  I purchased a game with lenslock and found it
was impossible to get into the game. No matter what I tried the
machine re-set due to wrong input.  My friendly neighbourhood shop
gave me another copy but still no joy. I phoned the supplier, who
asked me to return the game which I did at my cost. The
replacement worked (sometimes). I discovered, some time later,
that due to a mix-up wrong lenslocks had been supplied to a batch
of games. The supplier did not mention this with the returned game
nor did they offer to pay for my postage etc. caused by their
mistake. I tried to persevere but fought a losing battle with the
lenslock and finally it was put aside as part of life's
experiences. (At that time, I declined an offer of a hacked
version which did not require the use of the lenslock - not for
moral reasons, I assure you - just that he wanted money for a
'cracked' copy of a game I had found 'not worth playing').

Then came the big breakthrough, the use of spot words from a
Novella included with the software.  This approach was tried
various ways (Start of game, Re-load saved position) and finally
they settled on a 'random' check.  This involved a pirate
appearing randomly and saying "Arrh Oi tink dis is a pirate copy.
Do Ee input the word at page X, para X, line X, X word". Failure
to input the word correctly resulted in the the machine returning
to the start. It was still open to be hacked but I, hackless, was
left playing the game with the novella in my hand as the random
check occurred 32 times during the play through of an updated
version of a game I had previously completed.

        !! 32 random checks just for my benefit!!

Now the strange thing about all this protection is that the cost
of software has steadily risen over the years in spite of all this
price reducing protection.  In discussing this with a software
house, relating to a recent increase in their prices, they
informed me that they constantly battled to keep their in-house
costs to a minimum to produce cheaper software but the external
costs of duplication, packaging, protection and distribution had
to be borne by the end user!  Now I accept that I should be
expected to pay for any improvement to my software but the
addition of a useless piece of protection that in no way inhibits
real piracy but makes the software almost unusable is not much
'protection' to me.

Some suppliers claim that you need not worry about any heavy duty
protection that they use as they are willing to give a lifetime
guarantee to their software.  Whose lifetime? I will let you into
a secret, it is during their lifetime. Imagine my surprise when I
found this out by returning a faulty tape to a certain software
house which, unknown to me, had ceased trading and gone into
liquidation. As I had made no backup it was 'just my hard luck'.

Other software houses charge fabulous prices with promises of
lifetime support.  The bottom line, however, is still the same.
You are only entitled to your rights under the laws of the
country.  When a firm ceases trading all these lovely promises are
just thin air as I found out when I tried to have a failed master
disc replaced for one of my œ100+ utilities, only to find that
once again this company had gone into liquidation and had ceased
trading. 'Too bad Jack!'

I studied mining and related law for seven years to qualify to act
as a Colliery Manager.  This qualification, which I received from
Her Majesty's Health and Safety Executive, permitted me to operate
a mine under the current legislation. It did not allow me to
interpret the law to any degree and I was under the constant
supervision of H.S.E. Inspectors of Mines who ensured that the
mine was conducted correctly under the existing legislation. The
only legal recognition I was given by the Court was that I could
be called as an expert witness on mining matters (NOT legal
matters). The reason I have mentioned these details is to try to
show how complex the whole field of legislation is.  Now the laws
of this country are laid down as very comprehensive and complex
legal documents. The implementation and legal interpretation of
the exact meaning of the law lies with the courts.

The law of copyright has been tested in the courts in relation to
'piracy'.  I refer to the case in late 1987 where the court ruled
in favour of the Lotus Company, that a program produced by another
company had 'the look and feel' of Lotus 123 and was therefore a
copy.  No evidence was examined to show that the defendants had
copied the exact program or manuals of the Lotus Corporation -
just that it looked and felt like their program.

While this indicates that I have shown that there is a case to
answer, in law, relating to 'piracy' under the copyright act, I
think it unlikely that any change will take place, unless by some
very large rich company who are being hurt financially and feel
they can afford the civil litigation. No small company could
afford the required civil action since they would have to first
obtain an injunction from the Court forcing the defendant to cease
manufacture and issue of the software then fight the case in the
civil courts. The case having been dealt with, should the pursuant
lose his case, the defendant would be able to successfully claim
for lost revenue due to the injunction along with his court costs
and any other expenses incurred. Even winning, there is no
guarantee that the Court would award him his costs and he may face
further legal battles through the Appeal Court and House of Lords.

So it will be 'piracy' as usual, never called THEFT but hidden
under the euphemism of industrial espionage or something equally
bland - never call a thief a thief in case it's your turn next -
just call him an opportunist (pirate).  We will also have the
benefit of various pundits who will constantly bombard us with
their biased opinions and interpretations of the laws of this
country, in our case copyright laws, without the benefit of formal
study or legal qualification.  You should, of course, remember
that these are only opinions and observations and have no legal
value at all - and as I stated at the beginning, this is my
opinion and has a similar value!!!

I started to think about the moral side of all this and after
about 30 seconds abandoned it as a waste of time. When you think
about the present hype on the media that will take ages to forget,
I feel we should make use of some of their techniques. I would
suggest that we band together and gather money and power to fight
for our rights as software users.  I would be willing ... for a
very large salary and associated perks ... to take up the post of
hereditary autonomous financial controller and I would assure you
that your money would be put to good use. Trust me!! I give you a
lifetime guarantee!!

And then I thought ...