I remember when the first CD-R drives came out, a blank CD was around $100. In the early days, CD distribution of software was in some ways an intrinsic copy protection because computer hard drives typically had less capacity than a CD and it was not uncommon to run the software directly from the CD (not to mention that if you wanted to duplicate the CD it would cost $100 for a blank CD-R).
Speaking of CD being poor mans copy protection, sometimes quantity of disks was enough.
In Europe around 1996 Russian pressed pirate CDs showed up en masse. Often not direct 1:1 copies, but scene releases with modded homebrew translations, sometimes even including custom voice acting! It was especially hilarious in case of pirate localizations by Russians to other Slavic languages (mostly done by students barely speaking target language).
"Localization of foreign computer games in Russia was carried out by computer pirates in small studios from 1995 to 2005 who worked on a illegal basis. The most famous similar studio was "Fargus Multimedia". Localization made by such studios, most often had poor quality. Not only the text in the game could be translated, but also the name of the game itself."
Now the interesting thing about those pirate CDs was the business model. Smuggling and sales were mafia controlled, with fixed price set at ~$15 per disk. This made multi CD releases like Under a Killing Moon (4xcd), Phantasmagoria (7xcd), Ripper (6xcd), Wing Commander 3 (4xcd) etc much cheaper from legal sources. Break even was somewhere between 2 and 3 CD releases.
