Quote:
Originally Posted by bla
This so much reminds me of the old pc days and the attempts of the vendors to copy protect diskettes.
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I think it's virtually impossible to find reliable statistics on this, so one can believe what they want.
My impression is that software copy protection is much more effective today than in the floppy era. As a result, the great majority of Windows, and Microsoft Office, users are contributing to Microsoft's annual software sales of maybe US$60 billion.
I don't play in, or follow the world of, computer games, but according to this a lot of that software is also more effectively protected than in the diskette era:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/691088-xbox-one/66278379
Thievery will always exist. No preventive measures will ever come close to being completely effective. But it's not always true that thieves win.
Improving the effectiveness of copy protection for books is a tremendous challenge for reasons given in the thread. It's a hard problem, but one can't rule out technical advances.
One reason that software copy protection is today more effective than eBook copy protection is that software copy protection has been improving for the last 35 years.