Of collectors, geeks and copy protections...

Actually that'd be "manual protection". A "copy protection" consists of erroneous data, foreign-format sectors or other purposely introduced errors that will make a floppy drive or CD reader choke on the disc if it's not being read via the built-in access routines of the exe wrapper (or custom file system drivers).

I stand corrected once again! Sorry to have gotten these two mixed up. Actually the funny thing is that I never did take copy protection seriously - it ususally just didn't work - I remember waaaay back when a friend was panicing that you can't copy warcraft 2 ...well, let's just say we all had the "golden CD" of it ...oh, and to make things right again I did buy the original when I got enough money for it.

And I agree - if you collect games or at least want to play it for several years, there is no other way then copy it, CDs just get worn out as everything else - you have to keep copies!

And I agree, the LucasArts manual protections were definitely the most well-designed ones in terms of humor and ease of use. Most other games had an annoying "please enter word X of row Y on page Z" type protections, which were totally devoid of humor and just plain annoying.

Oh, yes! Good times! ...not now with those stupid registration keys