Wacky Anti-Piracy Methods of Yore

Posted by Alex in Crime & Law, Science & Tech on September 12, 2009 at 1:57 am

Software piracy ain’t anything new (before there was the Internet and all these fancy P2P piracy, there was the old school Sneakernet kind).

Royal Pingdom blog has a very interesting, blast-from-the-past article about fighting piracy through various copy protection methods, including code wheels, dongles, and feelies. For example:

Dongles

Dongles started appearing in the early 80’s and were used both for games and commercial software of other kinds. The dongle would need to be plugged in to the computer somehow, often through the serial or parallel port. Without the device plugged in, the software wouldn’t run.

The very first program to use a dongle was Wordcraft on the Commodore PET in 1980. Its dongle (the inventor named it so for lack of a better word) connected to the computer’s external cassette port and was two cubic inches large (32 cubic centimeters). We were unfortunately unable to find a picture of it.

These days some software uses USB dongles for copy protection, so we’re not rid of them yet. Dongles are pretty unpopular among users (it’s arguably one of the most hated software protection methods ever), so usually only more specialized and expensive software get away with using them.

Link – via GeekPress (Photo: GamesRadar)

 
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Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley

Posted by Alex in Cartoon & Comic, Music on March 2, 2009 at 3:55 am

This one is fantastic: cartoonist extraordinaire Nina Paley has just released her animated feature film Sita Sings the Blues, with 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw.

The story revolves around Sita, a goddess separated from her Lord and husband Rama and the present-day break up of animator Nina whose husband left for India and dumped her by email.

Nina Paley wants to release the animation 100% DRM-free, but in order to do so, she has to raise $50,000 to pay the holders of some of the musical compositions used in the film (you can help here at QuestionCopyright).

Official Website | Watch "The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told" at Reel13: Link | NY Times article about Sita Sings The Blues – via Super Punch

 
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