Copy Protection: Difference between revisions
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In theory, the only way to have fine-grained control over what end-users can or cannot do with software is to physically separate it from them via a client/server arrangement. In this setup, the client only serves as a front-end—sending player input to the server and outputting streaming audio and video from the server. With a competent IT staff, infringement all but ceases to exist, yet each player is at the mercy of the server's uptime and bandwidth requirements for streaming audio and video. [http://onlive.com OnLive], a retail PC game streaming platform, inherently has this kind of copy-protection. With servers being overloaded and game companies bombing on a regular basis, this ends up being one of the least reliable systems in terms of gameplay and game longevity.
The only thing that cannot be defeated is charging a monthly fee, and that really only works for massively multiplayer online games and other stuff that runs off of a central server. And sometimes even that isn't immune, especially when a popular game has private player-run servers start popping up, often implemented through reverse engineering of packets transmitted and received by the game client. This has the side effect of preserving multiplayer-only games which were otherwise made unplayable whenever the central servers for them go defunct.
See also [[Digital Piracy Is Evil]], [[DRM]].
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