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PC Floppy Copy Protection: An Interview With Robert McQuaid

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This post goes hand-in-hand with my article on Vault Corporation's Prolok copy-protection technology . Perhaps the most important historical legacy of Vault Corporation results from the lawsuit they initiated against Quaid Software, makers of the backup software CopyWrite. CopyWrite was capable of duplicating Prolok-protected diskettes with the help of a bundled utility called RAMKEY. Vault sued Quaid Software seeking an injunction and $100 million in damages. The resulting court case, Vault Corporation vs Quaid Software , was decided in Quaid's favor and established an important legal precedent protecting the rights of end users to make backup copies of their software without restriction. Robert McQuaid, founder of Quaid Software, was kind enough to agree to the following interview. How did you decide that Quaid Software would target the software backup business?  You could have done something less exciting, like make a spreadsheet or database program. I was in touch with a s
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PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

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This is Part 4 of a series on PC floppy copy protection methods. You can read the previous parts here:   Part 1, covering Formaster Copy-Lock Part 2, covering Softguard Superlok Part 3, covering EA Interlock Vault Corporation Vault was conceived in 1979 and incorporated in 1983. There's not much information about the early days of the company, but 1983 was a busy year for them. The trademark filing for Prolok, their first copy-protection product has a first-use date of March 1983. That same year would see several full-page, color advertisements in various PC magazines, making them one of the major competitors of firms like Softguard . Compared to the modest back-page adverts from other copy-protection firms, Vault's advertisements were very slick - clearly put together by a professional ad agency. One of Vault's biggest customers was  Ashton-Tate , makers of the industry-leading  dBase  database software and later owners of the  Framework  office suite. Both dBase III v1.0
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PC Floppy Copy Protection: Electronic Arts Interlock

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This is Part 3 of a series on PC floppy copy protection methods.  Again, I need to thank NewRisingSun and OBattler for their invaluable contributions. You can read the previous installments here: Part 1, covering Formaster Copy-Lock Part 2, covering Softguard Superlok Before Electronic Arts (EA) was the publishing juggernaut that it is today, it was just one of dozens of software publishers putting out titles for various home computers, including the IBM PC. EA was founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins , who would go on to create the ultimately unsuccessful 3DO game console . In the mid-1980's, EA was perhaps most famous for their paint program, Deluxe Paint , which became a popular graphics tool for the whole computer gaming industry. Unlike the companies we have covered to date, EA is mostly widely known for their games, not their copy protection schemes. EA is famous enough that a long segue into their corporate history isn't really necessary - you can just read the  Wikipedia ent
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