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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

and our linker prints out a slightly strange string in the help message.

Strange, or actually helpful? It would've been more devious if the message it was looking for actually contained more... potentially copyrightable content; here's one recently-mentioned example:

https://dacut.blogspot.ca/2008/03/oracle-poetry.html

This also reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v.....

Anyone who has experimented with Hackintoshing may also recall the "SMCDeviceKey", a "magic cookie" that serves a similar purpose of attempting to use copyright as a blocker to compatibility.

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Sega (and Nintendo) continued using schemes similar to the one at issue in Sega v. Accolade, but requiring the reproduction of the companies' respective logos. This is why the Nintendo logo on classic Game Boy systems is replaced with a solid block if you turn the system on without a cartridge; the displayed logo is read from the cartridge so that publishers would have to reproduce it. Nintendo also did a low-tech version with Famicom Disk System: there was a plate inside the drive embossed with "NINTENDO", (notionally) requiring a matching engraving in the disk's enclosure. In Sega's case they even devised a scheme of formatting bit patterns on CDs to produce a Sega logo visible to the naked eye, and then checking for the presence of those patterns to decide whether to boot a disc. I think the idea was less about making the compatibility token more copyright-worthy and instead making it a distinctive trademark so that Nintendo and Sega could go after bootleg manufacturers under various trademark laws.

Additionally, the GameBoy's bootrom compares the Nintendo logo from the cartridge with a copy stored in the bootrom, and refuses to boot if they don't match. However, several bootleg companies realised that the console reads the logo from the cartridge twice - once to display it and once to compare it. By abusing the precise timings involved, they could display a bootlegged logo while still passing the checks.

http://fuji.drillspirits.net/?post=87

The half-logo edits are hilarious and show some playful creativity, one of the things that makes those bootleg/unlicensed games a very interesting scene.

Why stop there when you can copyright empty files: http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html

Could you elaborate more on the SMCDeviceKey? What value does it store that infringes on copyright? A quick Google search didn't yield much.

Something like "our hard work is protected by these words, please don't steal (c) Apple" without spaces or punctuation...

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