[Lazamataz]

Purposefully selling a corrupted product is the work of an anti-genius of marketing. Spectacular, jaw-dropping idiocy.

LOTUS 123 tried something similar. They eventually realized that the copy protection they had engineered cost them more in support calls than pirated software would ever cost them.

[Noumenon]

Simple concept for a protest: buy these disks and promptly return them as defective. Do this many, many times. They'll eventually get the hint.

[angkor]

LOTUS 123 tried something similar. They eventually realized that the copy protection...

Microsoft once had a telecommunications program called Access (this was before the MS Access database).

Access had a bizarre habit of kicking into copy-protection mode at odd times, like when you were installing a completely legitimate copy. Just before the copy-protection rebooted your machine, it would display a message saying "What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Copy-protection violation. Erasing drive C."

Access was soon pulled from the market, never to be seen again, and eventually replaced by a database of the same name (which reminded me of some Stalinist bureaucrat airbrushing out the image of a liquidated politician).