Of course companies wanted people to share the free demo versions but some full games did have annoying protection schemes in the '80s. Obfuscated data and purposely “bad” sectors on floppy; cardboard decoder wheels; asking for word #x from line #y of page #z of the game’s manual, or, similarly, a page of codes printed in black ink on dark maroon paper to prevent photocopying… leading to folks distributing cracked versions and the cracking tools themselves!

To be fair, it was a pretty ridiculous time. Computer club meetings just turned into floppy-copy-fests.

The company that made my TV is engaged in copyright infringement, you say? Transmitting copyrighted images over the Internet for profit?

Huh.

God can’t seem to get much done without the US Military 😬

Religious zealots can’t be allowed to have nukes. You have to at least masquerade as a well-adjusted nation while you develop the nukes and slowly massage your zealots into positions of power over a few decades. Those are the rules.