GregA said:
"do you buy music from iTMS? Do you listen on multiple machines? Do you feel like Apple is treating you as a criminal?"
I don't buy anything from iTMS. I download some of the free stuff, but I hardly listen to it, and I don't copy the crippled files to other machines. Many of the free songs still have "Play Count: 0". I don't like DRM schemes, and I don't bother trying to crack them. If Apple doesn't want me to listen to the music the way I want, then I won't pay for it. I support the local music stores instead.
"is Apple capable of protecting its software in a better way than MS was going to?"
No, because what happens is that simple "protection" becomes schemes which require Internet connections and "dongle" devices. It's a complication that costs money and causes frustration for legitimate users who have paid lots of money for a crippled product. There are cracks for the "dongle" scheme, but I'm not going to pay $1,000 for a product that requires me to break into it. If a company wants to hog one of my USB ports, then let them pay for a USB port extender or pay rent for the use of the port. The company had no reply to that comment.
"If you could choose between $99 for "Fairplay" copy protected OSX 10.4 (for instance) or $129 for unprotected, which would you personally choose?"
I'd pay more money for less hassle and a product that can't be disabled by a copy-protection scheme. I like how my copy of the original OS X CD-ROM can be used on any compatible Mac. If I need to reinstall or repair OS X on any Mac, I can use it without having to worry about copy-protection, and my OS X CD will still work after Apple discontinues support for it.
"Often the license conditions are important. My partner and I have 2 computers, we both have a login on each. I bought Quicktime Pro. I want to use Quicktime Pro on my logins on both computers, she doesn't. When you activate QT Pro, it only activates for a single user on the machine - thus the software lets me install it the way I want."
I have multiple user accounts for different tasks. QuickTime won't work if I use Fast User Switching?
"Same thing will happen if I buy iWork - she won't use it, I'll want it on both. I might act within the spirit of the license, but the license could disagree! This is where I am worried about protection devices."
That's also why I don't use software which includes such schemes.
"So to be clear - I believe a company can protect its property. It must be flexible for the user though! And seamless! It needs to protect me if someone fakes my install ID, but also let me reinstall if I remove something (deregister?) off one machine or the machine dies."
I believe that a company should better serve its customers by adding value to its products instead of demanding money with arrogant license schemes. A software company should guarantee the functionality of its software instead of claiming that anything wrong with it is the users' problem. Companies have shown that the use of copy-protection does not cause a decrease in prices. You're paying more money for the copy-protection development and getting nothing in return. It's like the magnetic security gates in stores that make annoying noises when a magnet passes near them. The only people those things really stop are stupid criminals and legitimate customers. A real shoplifter knows how to disable the magnetic tags. The stores claim that hundreds of security cameras, store guards, and anti-theft schemes will keep prices low, but the prices always seem to go up. When the prices don't go up, the quality and selection of the products decreases. Although software companies claim that copy-protection schemes will lower prices, if you compare the prices of software before and after such schemes were used, you might find that the prices have increased. Look at Microsoft, Macromedia, and Symantec - where is the reduction in prices that their schemes were supposed to cause? Even if companies did make more money by using copy-protection, the end user will not benefit from lower prices because extra earnings go to the executives and shareholders first. The only thing the end user might get is an increase in product quality, but with a decrease in usability and the risk that the product could be made useless by the copy-protection scheme. The big problem is not the user who wants to fairly use purchased software, but the criminals that make millions of CDs and sell them on the black market. That's not fair use, and they're making money and helping to create a monopoly for the software companies. Not surprisingly, companies like Microsoft do not attack this problem as much as they do the ordinary user. I used to send "piracy" reports to Microsoft and others when I saw spamvertised software, but the same spammers are still there months later. I sent a report about a Wintroll that was claiming he was using a "pirated" copy of some software, and Microsoft sent a reply back within a day, claiming that this user would be "investigated" quickly. But spammers at "cheapsoftware.cn" don't get the same response. If you want more software sales, you have to get your software into the hands of more people, who will then want to pay money for the perceived value of the next version and will pay money for support of the current version.
