copy protection and games

Wook

copy protection
I have forked out 50 euro plus for c&c generals at game some months ago. I always keep my receipts for a couple of weeks and now the damn CD broke because of the cover it sits in.
Right damn in the middle there is a crack...had I be able to make a backup of this damn cd , I could still play it but now I had to visit game copy_world for an exe file that allows me to play without the cd.

Is it legal to make backups from software you have bought ?
If so, how can I copy an 'copy protected' cd ? and why would they protect it in the first place if it was legal ?!

I know of the piracy, and the poor developers only earning a fraction of the total price I always have to pay.
But I also believe that some games have benefited from pirates...more to be spread around and more people know the title, everybody is looking on the net for trades and the name of the game spreads around like a virus. Do you believe the C&C branch would have become this big without pirates ? Or let's say.. Doom clones without Doom the original being spread around like cookies ?

A pissed off honest buyer of games with a crack in my cd.

TheDuke

if you have legitimately bought the CD you can make a "safe" copy and with the pile of crap that piles on my desk I find this a good idea - so you keep the orignal CD in a safe place. Even better is the NO CD crack so you don't need to continually swap arround.

It is kind of a gray zone thing cause you do have the lisence to install and run it on ONE machine so the number of CD's doesn't really matter (please correct me anyone if I've missed something - but thats pretty much the lisencing with any package I've come accross).

I can't agree to piracy is of any benefit - it may make the games more known - but that doesn't pay the bills. Same as all the MOD'ding extend the life of the game but doesn't add a cent to the developers pay package (only that the next offical add on will definitely be purchased).

I take the same line as you, in that you wouldn't steal the hardware to play it so why then steal the software. :cool:

For the months of fun I get out of €35, this will barely get me into the second hour on a night out.

The Duke : ))

MrPinK

You can copy the game as much as you like as long as you don't distribute it or install it on multiple machines (which is the ridiculous part that you should feel free to ignore). CloneCD is my favourite and will get around most protection. BlindWrite is probably technically superior but is not nearly as nice to use. You need a burner that supports raw writing for protected games afaik.

If I can't find a no cd crack for a game then I always make a copy of the CD image and leave it on my hard disk. CloneCD lets you mount them to a virtual drive so the game thinks there's a physical CD present. No game in the last year actually needs anything on the CD. There's no real need for swapping disks around

amp

For the purposes of this board any talk of copying games is banned. See the charter for more details.

Locked.