I understand that this is the protection system used in Poser5, and it might interest some of you to read this statement from another company.

http://www.crmav.com/enews/88/prosoniq_to_drop_the_pace_copy_protection_from_all_products.shtml

i really do hope that cl will drop it also for the p6. but who knows what another 3 years may bring... :P

Another company has wised up and decided not to piss off their customers. Maybe they actually read some sales education that state it's 10 times harder to get a new customer, as it is to keep an existing one. So if you piss off the existing ones... you have to work 10 times harder to keep your sales up.

who knows, that may be CL in 3 years. I mean, Poser 5 has already been cracked, and I am sure a crack for the patch will be out soon, so what did all that copy protection accomplish, except to upset the paying customers. Someone else in the forum stated that a company should offer somthing intangible to paying customers, like good technical support and the like, to encourage people to do the right thing. I think that is smart.

They've already done what they need to do. Offer an excellent product. The good people will buy, the bad people won't. The bad people who MIGHT have bought it won't make up for the good people who get pissed off when you put IDIOTIC copy protectin schemes on your product.

Seems to me this is what I've been saying all along. Too many choice quotes in the article to paste, but I'll go with this one anyway: "We dropped PACE from our PC line of products about one year ago and did not see any decrease in sales. In fact, many customers are thanking us for taking that step, freeing them from the need to get response codes, the need for replacement diskettes and other hassle they had in the past."

Yup! Copy protection only looks good on paper. In practical application it's much easier to devote the time and money to R&D and have a kick-ass product that people WANT to buy... geez... I know I'm getting old.. but I do remember when people WANTED to buy things. Don't target the people who don't want to buy... target the people who WANT to buy! Spend a little time in time sales... you'll develop a "knack" for knowing who to spend more time with because they "want" to buy, and who to spend less time with because they don't want to buy. Sadly... the people who usually make the decision about copy protection are managers/technical people... not sales men. Oh well... I'm rehashing the same old argument that falls on the same deaf ears.

The only people who benefit from copy protection are the developer of copy protection software. ;P

The only people who benefit from copy protection are the developer of copy protection software. ;P Not true. The copy protection kept me from buying so I saved a chunk of money on something I didn't absolutely need anyhow. I would call this decidedly beneficial... Grin. - Jack

Not true. The copy protection kept me from buying... Oops, collateral damage. ;)