screwing with pirates

[fujidude]

 

...but I didn't find the OP taking on scientific methods to try to prove his theories.

 

Yeah, there aren't too many trolls in science.

[flashjazzcat]

I am very sure I can come up with something that can keep a pirate busy for awhile.

You might as well announce a hacking contest. Your encryption techniques would probably keep pirates busy a lot longer if the methods weren't constantly under discussion.

[VladR]

I am very sure I can come up with something that can keep a pirate busy for awhile. I considered registration and activation codes or do something that requires them to have the manual with them at one point. But it wont be too long before someone posts the answers up on Atariage.

Are you intentionally inviting everybody [who has some remote experience with 6502 ASM] to participate in the group effort of hacking your binary ? It sure looks like that. And for sure, you've just raised the hacking satisfaction expectations (but you might not be aware of that).

 

Remember the Star Raiders II thread ? Where people briefly examined the source code and in a group effort, the result quickly converged ?

 

 

But it wont be too long before someone posts the answers up on Atariage.

And can you honestly blame them ?

[carlsson]

As for software that damages hardware, I also got to remember the "PET Killer Poke", although it would affect just as badly if you bought the software for $100 as if you copied it from a friend. In that case it was a matter about compatible computers with changes to the monitor hardware, that probably could be identified by reading firmware content but I suppose one way of anti-theft would be to bypass the firmware checks if the software could not be identified as genuine.

 

I'll admit though that I misread the OP, he only wanted his computers to lock up so you had to reset them, not permanently damage the hardware.

[TMR]

I'll admit though that I misread the OP, he only wanted his computers to lock up so you had to reset them, not permanently damage the hardware.

His want changed over time, one of his last posts talked about trashing the user's data on a Mega CD.

[peteym5]

I never invited anyone to hack my binaries. The ideal of encoding registration or the manual thing came up when I considered putting games up for pay-per-download (digital download). However Video61 and KJMANN12 convinced me to stick with cartridge only so that ideal was abandoned because codes will be online within hours after I release the game. Everyone prefer the cartridge game be plugged in and ready to play. After all, we are not the PC-Gaming community where even software you download for free requires you to register it with some company. The only thing I did with the demos was I made it difficult for anybody to add extra levels, screens, features, back into the game. I purposely compiled the demos with earlier versions of the source code before they were optimized. Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold and Tempest Xtreme Demo almost took up the full 64K usable RAM area. If someone like the demo, and they want more, then they may purchase the cartridge.

Edited September 23, 2017 by peteym5

[TMR]

I never invited anyone to hack my binaries.

Wee-ell, you did claim to be "very sure [you] can come up with something that can keep a pirate busy for awhile" and it's pretty hard not to see that as an invitation even if you're not a cracker...

 

Just by coincidence, a 2015 European Commission report covering the effects of piracy on sales has just [ahem] "surfaced" which, after spending quite a bit of money doing the research, concluded that "the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements" (my emphasis).

[peteym5]

I never accused everyone on Atariage as being thieves, pirates, or traitors. I do know it is not "The Pirate Bay." Most of the piracy is happening with bit-torrent networks these days. We do look at these sites to see if anyone is posting my games. Attorneys working for the Motion Picture Industry, Recording Artist, and Software Companies continue to put pressure on these sites. Mininova, kick-ass-torrents, extratorrent had been shut down within the last year because of all the copyrighted material being made available for free download. Video 61 even has an attorney working with that group.

 

I will never post binaries, ROM images, or the games currently available on cartridge for downloading. Unless I decide it to be a free game or demo. The moderators do a good job at removing any copyrighting material on here. I had to request a hacked 5200 Venture to be taken down from the 5200 thread back in June 2017, as I do intend to do my own release on a real 5200 cartridge. I was very upset that it was hacked and removed the names of people who worked hard on the game to make it possible. People even posted that they would rather buy the game from Video 61. By keeping that Venture Rom image there implies that I support the piracy of the game.

Edited September 24, 2017 by peteym5

[tep392]

The moderators do a good job at removing any copyrighting material on here. I had to request a hacked 5200 Venture to be taken down from the 5200 thread back in June 2017, as I do intend to do my own release on a real 5200 cartridge. I was very upset that it was hacked and removed the names of people who worked hard on the game to make it possible. People even posted that they would rather buy the game from Video 61. By keeping that Venture Rom image there implies that I support the piracy of the game.

That's a fascinating example when you consider the person who did the hack. It doesn't at all support the argument that users are out there hacking and distributing home brews.

[ac.tomo]

What stops the pirates from simply viewing the BASIC listing and spotting the password or removing the "protection"? There's nothing you can do as a BASIC programmer to obfuscate your program that a cracker - someone who usually has a lot of "in the field" machine code knowledge - can't undo and even if the program is compiled it doesn't take much picking around for someone with that skillset to find the password.

 

The bigger question that springs to mind though is why would you bother in the first place?! Even something that'd put up a fight from assembly language is pretty pointless because one password leak or weak algorythm later and everything is undone.

 

I haven't been following this thread so if I mention something that has already been said then please excuse me, but there are a couple of things a beginner can do to cause hacking problems, not so much to stop copying, but viewing or editing. For instance:

The Break key can be disabled; see location 16 and 53774,

The RESET key can be TRAPped, I can't remember how I used to do this, it's been some time, but I know location 9 can show you 1 way of preventing RESET accessing your BASIC program, also

The CTRL-3 key during input can be prevented by TRAPing it to a particular line, and

The BASIC listing itself can be disguised, I can't remember all of what you can do, it's been a long time, but you can start at location 138 & 139, see MAPPING the ATARI, and lastly;

To make your BASIC program RUN immediately after LOADing it all you have to do is load your basic program into a word processor and at the bottom of your program insert the RUN command without a line number. Be careful what word processor you use because most good ones store additional information other than what you see, so it's best to use a very basic one, one that will suffice is SPEEDSCRIPT.

Have fun.