Honor system, good people and niche markets with honest customers aside:

U.S. Law provides 'fair use' copy privileges to a buyer. Thus programmers and distributors of copy protection breaking software aren't in jail. Each buyer has the legal right to make a copy of the original for backup, regardless of 'copyright protection' efforts.

CD/DVD copies are now being reported to only last 5 to 8 years, versus the 100 years originally expected. That's IF you DON'T scratch it up. I don't know about you guys but I breath near a CD and it's scratched. I Love MAAS. I've salvaged many expensive CD's with it and made my back ups so I can have a clean copy.

I'm not sure about the skill level of Bill's customer base (including the srp gang) but you don't have to be a genius to run the commercially, legally available software packages out there. Heck, I can even get software that will duplicate physical errors on a disk (another form of copy protection).

Decent disk/file protection software/hardware costs mucho dinero. Is this worth several hundred to several thousand dollars to protect a 25 to 35 buck disk or file that may or may not immediately pay for the 'copyright protection' investment?

Bill, if you choose to pursue copy prevention you'll have to do your homework and realize that there's always going to be a way around them. Most schemes only reduce the number of people who break them, and very few reduce the number of copies that get distributed because once it's copied that copy is no longer protected.