Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m463 | Hacker News Reader

Back in the 1980's I think there were a lot of interesting schemes.

The solution was to just get an updated version of copy2pc or copywrite and they would have a fix.

But I remember a few schemes that were interesting workarounds.

One was the hole in the disk, one was a laser-burned dot on the disk.

I recall with the hole in the disk - the software would try to read and if it succeeded it was a copy.

The second one was slightly different and I believe the software would write to it, and read it back, and if it could read it back it was a copy.

However the best of all was either the scratch-n-sniff card from Leather Godesses of Phobos, or the Age Verification of Leisure Suit Larry.

example:

  "Gone With The Wind" is about
  a. outer space.
  b. a bank robbery.
  c. four hours long.
  d. dust.

or

  President Ford prescribed _____ for dealing with economic problems.
  a. tranquilizers
  b. employment
  c. that everyone wear a WIN button
  d. that everyone should have a nice day

It's also quite funny that Quaid (who made copywrite) was sued by a protection vendor... but won!

"We hold that: (1) Quaid did not infringe Vault's exclusive right to reproduce its program in copies under § 106(1); (2) Quaid's advertisement and sale of RAMKEY does not constitute contributory infringement; (3) RAMKEY does not constitute a derivative work of Vault's program under § 106(2); and (4) the provision in Vault's license agreement, which prohibits the decompilation or disassembly of its program, is unenforceable."

in https://cyber.harvard.edu/ilaw/Contract/vault.htm

Edit: there is a Wikipedia page for that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_Corp._v._Quaid_Software_.... (there is a dot at the end of the URL but HN parser does not treat it correctly)

> the Age Verification of Leisure Suit Larry

I played the modern version (Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded) a bit but couldn't complete the age verification because it relied on the American history and pop culture too much. Had to shamefully google the answers.

I'm on the (significantly) younger side, is there some kind of trick or reason behind these questions, or what they're for?

Yes, to keep you out of a racy game before central ID registries like login-with-FB. They're old-people questions.

Did people not just search it on whateever engine was available at the time? (Yahoo?)

The original game was released in 1987, so that wasn't really an option:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_in_the_Land...

At the time the game was released, the internet might be available in a modem that would go at the blazing fast speeds of a thousand bits per second. And of course, tie up your phone line in the process. The WWW hadn't been invented yet, let alone search engines.

Having been a kid during the formative years of the Internet, I can tell you that the notion of "you can find everything on the internet" doesn't really start coming into play until the early 2000s. In the late 90s, having to do research generally meant schlepping yourself to the library and finding encyclopedias or other research materials. Or, if you were lucky, maybe you had something like Microsoft Encarta, an encyclopedia on a CD-ROM!

ha :)

This was the dark ages, when people could lose phone numbers, forget birthdays and when stuck in a game - suffer without hints or cheat codes.

hey some of us manage to forget birthdays even nowadays.

It just takes a bit more work :)

If you got the software from pirate BBS, you would meditate on its file list to check for presence of notes, hints, FAQs and release info files if that information was not attached. Newsgroups/echomail could have it posted, too, routinely, or as an answer to someone's question.

That was a bit later, though. In the age of physical disk swapping, you would ask friends, or prepare for an audience with That One Guy Who Has Everything And Knows Everything.

99% of the time when you got "random questions" like this in a game it was an anti-piracy trait. The idea was that people might be able to copy your disc, but they would be unable to play the game unless they could answer your questions - which would require the manual to be used.

(Bearing in mind that photocopiers were uncommon at the time.)

In the case of Leisure Suit Larry the opening questions were actually designed as an age-test. The intention was that "children" wouldn't know the answers and would be unable to play the "risqué" game.

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