Keeping the Pirates at Bay – Copy and Crack Protection (2001)

I deleted it before I saw there were responses, because I mistakenly assumed this article was relatively recent (I mean, retro look is a thing in video games, right?). I had no idea it was from 2001 until the "(2001)" was added after it was first posted (I'm not a gamer at all). Sorry for the confusion, about 5 people responded at the same time right as I was deleting it (didn't know the comments were incoming).

2001 obviously makes a big difference. I'll pay more attention to dates now.

That said, I don't understand why you wrote "data you don't actually need to hide". Wasn't that the point? I mean, holding off cracks for a month or two was good, but wouldn't holding them off for years be ideal?

And yes (I can't tell if you're being disdainful or honestly amazed) but we do now live in a world when you don't have to worry about performance implications of using SHA in all but the most resource constrained environments (and even then, SHA hardware acceleration is often available).

But you make some other good points I had not considered.

> cracks are obviously a serious concern if developers like this one would go to so much effort to prevent them.

If your crazy uncle wears tinfoil hats to combat CIA mind-rays, this doesn't mean CIA mind control technology is a concern.

It just means your uncle is mentally ill.

> And I remember Nintendo saying piracy had hurt DS software sales in Europe (understandably: instead of buying several full titles, people would buy a cheap "R4" or similar flash cart and play hundreds of games for free

This is no proof that sales were hurt. It could be true (and almost certainly is) that people who did this would not have bought extra games even if the flash carts had been unavailable. If the 12 yr old pirates $17,000 (retail price) of music, this does not mean the record companies are out $17,000... 12 yr olds don't have $17,000 to spend even if they are prevented from pirating.

You're not being logical, you're just parroting anti-copying propaganda. It's more than a little sick.

I am honestly amazed by modern technology, and I have to keep reminding myself how cool everything is compared to just a decade back.

The article says October 17th, 2001, right at the start, and throughout the first page they speak of the development period informed by data accurate as of December 2000. The "ten seconds exclusive access to the CD" speaks for itself though.

And given the state of the game market (as described in the article) the difference in terms of revenue between a couple months and forever is minimal. The attention spans of the cracker groups, the peaks in revenue, and the peaks in interest (which drives both revenue and piracy) all have a very strong bias to new games. The primary stated objective of this hack was to prevent pirated copies of the US version from cannibalizing sales of the EU version (which presumably was delayed due to translation work). It's data that's distributed to thousands of machines worldwide, not something you want to keep desperately secret.

> Right, but it does not mean that the record companies are out $0 either.

I might concede that this is the case, but only if we first agree that this doesn't mean you get to choose some arbitrary number in the middle and pretend that this is the "average loss".

I know of no economic science that can provide a reasonable number, either. You'd be lying if you claimed you knew of one.

> They are probably missing out on at least several hundred dollars worth of revenue

This would be the very extreme edge of the maximum. They're probably missing out on several tens of dollars.

And for this, they've hijacked the criminal justice system with bribes to congresses and parliaments, extended copyright protection so much that it now lasts a duration best measured in centuries, bankrupted innocent people with million dollar judgements, and sent people to prison for what shouldn't even be misdemeanors.

They want us to all pay, through our tax funding of the criminal justice system, for these minor theoretical losses. Why should I have sympathy for that?

Games companies specifically have broken their own works so thoroughly that it's difficult or impossible to get games just a few decades old to run. This is stealing from the public domain. It'd be like burning down your apartment just before the lease runs out, to make sure the landlord doesn't get it back.

Fuck them.

>The article says October 17th, 2001, right at the start, and throughout the first page they speak of the development period informed by data accurate as of December 2000. The "ten seconds exclusive access to the CD" speaks for itself though.

Yes, and once again, I vow to pay better attention to dates and context. I already sincerely apologized. I was reading an article on anti-cracking, so that was the part I was concentrating on. And usually, I filter dates out when I read because the difference between a technical article published in 2012 and 2013 is fairly minimal (while the difference between 2014 and 2001 is pretty massive, which is why HN requires old articles to include the year). But clearly, this filter has caused both me and all the commenters unneeded grief, so I'll turn my date filter off.

>And given the state of the game market (as described in the article) the difference in terms of revenue between a couple months and forever is minimal.

Fair enough. I'm not a gamer and don't claim to know much about gaming.