Technology; Piracy in Era Of Computers

Feb. 24, 1983 - The New York Times

AFTER a number of false starts against the black market in computer software and hardware, efforts are under way to protect future computer products by making each one as distinctive as the person who uses it and thus harder to copy.

As a result, there may be gradual erosion of the difference between hardware and software and a significant change in the way ordinary users purchase and operate their computers.

Over the short run, manufacturers acknowledge privately, the battle against software pirates is already lost. Most software comes packaged on floppy disks, record-like pieces of plastic that store information. And most computers include utility programs making it possible for even a novice to make an exact electronic back-up copy of almost any commercially available program.

Thus computer owners can exchange thousands of dollars worth of software as easily as children trade bubble-gum cards.

Some mail-order houses sell pirated copies of software for half the cost of the original.

Efforts by legitimate manufacturers to encode their programs to prevent copying have merely led to an expensive cat-and mouse game, in which determined hobbyists and pirates break the codes as fast as manufacturers create them.

Manufacturers hope for better luck with the next generation of computers. Seymour Rubinstein, president of the Micropro International Corporation, a leading software house, said, ‘‘Eventually each machine and program will have a specific identity, and they will only run together.’’

In the most widely suggested plan, every computer in the country would be sold with an electronic ‘‘serial number’’ in the computer’s central processing unit. The machine would compare its own number with one embossed on the software sold to the machine’s owner. Users could make unlimited back-up copies but could not pass them on because neither the machine nor the software could operate unless the numbers matched.

But a problem, according to Mr. Rubenstein, arises if the computer is repaired or replaced. Users would find that their old software would not operate with the new machine. ‘‘There are ways around that, but we’re still working on it,’’ said Mr. Rubenstein, who is studying copy-protection methods with a committee of the Association for Data Processing Service Organizations.

In a variation of the serial-number plan, the first use of new software would prompt a message from the computer showing the identification numbers of the program and of the machine itself. The user would make a telephone call to the manufacturer, giving his credit card number and the two serial numbers, and would receive a code to make the software function on that machine.

More radical plans envision the elimination of floppy disks, which many people already regard as an inefficient way to store information.

Instead of a disk, a computer program would be stored on a ROM, meaning ‘‘Read Only Memory.’’ This is a computer chip engraved with unalterable computer instructions. When purchased, the computer would already include chips containing popular software, such as word processing programs, spreadsheets for financial planning or graphics packages. But access to the programs would be limited to users paying the price for the key to unlock the full powers of their machine.

Some people advocate building the software into the hardware. They cite home arcade games as their model. Game cartridges are essentially ROM’s that are plugged into the side of the machine. While they can be copied, doing so is difficult and expensive. Kaufman Research Manufacturing Inc., a small company in Mountain View, Calif., recently received patent approval for a ROM that will execute a program but will not disclose the full structure of the program, the prerequisite to copying. ‘‘The only way to replicate it,’’ said Marc T. Kaufman, inventor of the device, ‘‘is to put it under an electron microscope.’’

But merging hardware and software has its problems. Unlike a simple Pac-Man game, a sophisticated program cannot just be plugged into the machine. And permanently installed chips limit consumers to using the programs provided by the manufacturer of the computer.

‘‘If this industry has learned anything in the past year,’’ said Rick Magnuson, director of retail marketing for Digital Research, ‘‘it should be that consumers like to select their own software.’’ Programs embedded in the machine are also impossible to update without changing chips. Mr. Rubenstein likens the problem to ‘‘buying a video cassette recorder with all the movies already built in.’’

Fighting the software pirates means headaches for ordinary users. ‘‘Any system of locks and preventive measures makes everyone’s life more difficult,’’ said Edward Currie, president of Lifeboat Associates, a New York software producer. ‘‘The last thing a manufacturer should want to do today is traumatize his customers.’’