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Omega's decision to change to a different software copy protection scheme
likely stems primarily from customer complaints about the security block.
No one likes security blocks.
However, $8,420,294,000 was lost to software piracy in North America and
Pacific rim countries in 1995. An additional $4,249,944,00 was lost in
Europe (Source BSA/SPA). At least one of every two software applications in
use was an illegal copy. Software developers suffered license fee losses of
over 90% in some markets. That is why more and more developers are choosing
to protect their work.
No one likes copy protection, but the only alternative is to not have a
product like TradeStation at all, because products like that cost millions
of dollars to develop and the Internet makes it extremely easy to distribute
unlicensed copies. Without protection, a program like TradeStation would be
posted at Web and FTP sites throughout the world where illegal copies could
be downloaded. License revenue would be too small to even pay back
development expenses, let alone make a profit.
Users often fail to realize the differences between horizontal and vertical
market software products in regard to copy protection. Horizontal market
products (products usable by most everyone) have huge licensing potential.
Major horizontal market programs like Access, Excel, and Word also cost
millions of dollars to develop, but there are millions of customers, so
individual license fees can be very small. They can be so small that
products like that sometimes can be licensed for little more than what the
user manuals would cost if purchased at a bookstore. Because the license
fees are so small and because users want the manuals, illegal copying is
less of a problem than with vertical market software. It still is a
significant problem, but less of a problem.
Vertical market software is software that is of interest to only a small
segment of computer users. TradeStation is a vertical market product.
Vertical market software can be just as costly to develop as horizontal
market software, but the customer base is much smaller. Because there are
fewer customers, each customer has to pay more to pay back development
expense and provide a reasonable profit.
Because the potential customer base is small and product development expense
is high, vertical market software usually is supplied with less and with
lower quality printed documentation. The combination of higher license fees
and less valuable printed documentation makes illegal copying very tempting.
So tempting, that it is not economically feasible to supply sophisticated
vertical market software without copy protection.
Consequently, Omega can choose only between having copy protection or not
offering TradeStation. There is no other commercially viable alternative.
I can speak with the benefit of more experience than most about the relative
merits of software and hardware copy protection schemes, because Scientific
Approaches has marketed copy protected vertical market software for years.
Until recently we have used a software copy protection method of our own
design. It is extraordinarily secure. We are not aware that it ever has
been successfully violated. However, it suffers from the inconveniences
others have pointed out on the list.
Customers have to contact us to obtain a new registration code whenever they
upgrade to a new computer or make certain changes to an old computer. That
is inconvenient to them and to us. Furthermore, we have to trust that
customers actually have upgraded to a new computer and that they are not
simply trying to run an additional unlicensed copy. There are fixes for
that problem, but they introduce additional problems.
Because of these problems, we recently switched to hardware security blocks.
The blocks we use are more sophisticated and have many advantages compared
to the more primitive variety used by Omega. They don't need to be
installed on a printer port. There is a serial port version or a card that
can be installed in a PC bus internally, so nothing hangs out the back of a
computer. However, all these variations add cost to our products and
customers would prefer to not have any of them.
As I read various complaints on this list, I often think Omega users
wouldn't want what they demand if Omega provided it, because they would like
the tradeoffs even less. Users should be careful about what they demand,
because they might get it. Software protection has certain advantages, but
overall, after years of experience with the problems, we have decided
hardware security is best. I think both Omega and their customers will
regret the decision to move from hardware security blocks.
However, as we grumble, we shouldn't forget why Omega probably made that
decision. We should be sure we actually want what we demand, before we
demand it.
-Bob Brickey
Scientific Approaches
sci@xxxxxxxxxx
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