This is a very interesting article about copy protection from yesteryear.
Software piracy has been around basically since the inception of software, and copy protection methods almost as long, so today’s discussions around DRM really isn’t anything new. All the way back in 1976, a certain Bill Gates wrote an open letter to a computer hobbyist club complaining that “most of you steal your software.” Back in those days, however, even he considered copy protection to just be in the way and wasn’t an advocate for it.
There has been a huge number of more or less creative methods to prevent people from making illegal copies of games and other software, but the ones we think are the most interesting (and amusing to look back at) are the ones involving actual physical extras. Though these days most copy protection is mostly software based, there was a period back in the 80’s and early 90’s when software developers pursued other methods, and game creators tended to be extra inventive.
You can read the complete article here.