HD Installers - now illegal?

[rattus]

I saw this worrying message at http://de.aminet.net/ and a few other european mirrors.

HD INSTALLERS REMOVED. Due to changes in copyright, harddisk installers of commercial programs no longer seem to be legal in several countries. They have been removed.

This sucks. I'm currently grabbing everything game-related off the UK FTP mirror which (for now) still has everything

[jmmijo]

If true, this is disturbing

I think it still comes down to the almighty dollar/pound/euro/yen, whatever. No regard for the public good or that the title is not longer commmercially available

[Paul]

What!

This can't be right?

[Dizzy]

Okay Calm down, it might be illegal in Europe (as many cool things are) but Hey the world do contain a lot of country wich is not EUROPE, we're not the center of the univers....

[Mr Creosote]

Yes, copyright laws here in Germany have recently changed. Removing copy protection mechanisms from any copyrighted material is now considered a criminal offense, no matter if it's just to make your own original version usable. This is mainly aimed at music CDs (which are in fact not CDs... but that's a different story...), but it affects software as well of course. Great new world

[rattus]

but what will this mean for WHDload and the others? Will it be reduced to r*mz/w*arez status only to be found in newsgroups and IRC channels? :eek

[jmmijo]

Most likely rattus

[Unknown_K]

Authorities are smart, kill the well knows slow connections that serve at 15k/sec while leaving the not so well known newsgroups alone that send at 300k/sec

[Mr Creosote]

Authorities are smart, kill the well knows slow connections that serve at 15k/sec while leaving the not so well known newsgroups alone that send at 300k/sec

There is nothing to laugh about there, because it is smart. You said yourself why: "well-known" versus "not-so-well-known".

[Dizzy]

Or easy to threaten vs very Hard to threaten... newsgroup are total out of control....

[whiteb]

Originally posted by Dizzy
Or easy to threaten vs very Hard to threaten... newsgroup are total out of control....

This is the thing, the anti piracy groups arent going for the hard to get groups, like newsgroups... they are targetting 12 year old children for their pocket money.

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by whiteb
This is the thing, the anti piracy groups arent going for the hard to get groups, like newsgroups... they are targetting 12 year old children for their pocket money.

Well the sad fact is most people do get their games, apps, music, movies from the NET. Its almost not cool to buy your stuff anymore. The bandwidth of the internet is making it much easier to grab 100x whats you could really use. There has to be a price ballance between outright theft and affordable entertainment. The question people ask is it worth paying $50 for a new game that will probably suck or download maybe 10 games and buy the 1 you like to play? If audio cd's which cost next to nothing to make were $6 instead of $16 more people would buy them. Why is it that DVD's that cost alot of money to make cost about the same price as an audio cd? Its just greed, and people just dont like the price so they download.

[kolorabi]

Does anyone have any links to news stories regarding these law-changes? And which countries are affected (is this something only relevant for Germany or for the entire EU or what?)

[Codetapper]

I wouldn't get too worried about this - how exactly can they determine if a hard drive install removes the copy protection from a particular title if it is not mentioned in the readme anywhere? Most of my installs now I don't even bother to mention copy protection, purely because people have come to expect that it's removed

There are thousands more sites on the internet which offer cracks for currently sold PC software - if they were going to clamp down I'm sure they would go after these sites first rather than installs for "dead" computers like the Amiga!

And if for some reason the installs have to go offline they will just have to be hosted somewhere else.

[Mr Creosote]

Codetapper: In general, I agree, but we all know that this

There are thousands more sites on the internet which offer cracks for currently sold PC software - if they were going to clamp down I'm sure they would go after these sites first rather than installs for "dead" computers like the Amiga!

is not the case...

[Amiga1992]

What concerns me is... what does this all mean to WHDLoad?

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by Akira
What concerns me is... what does this all mean to WHDLoad?

I think that in the USA and in other high tech countries anybody who reverse engineers or distributes any code they dont own 100% wether it is old games, windows xp, emulators, old roms, etc will be prosecuted or at least shut down. this trend will change when the current president (and republican party) gets thrown out of the white house.

[jmmijo]

Perhaps, but this kind of thing shouldn't be politically motivated but it always comes down to that and money of course

[Unknown_K]

Originally posted by jmmijo
Perhaps, but this kind of thing shouldn't be politically motivated but it always comes down to that and money of course

It all comes down to nothing but money. Politicians are motivated by the extremely rich who get them elected and give them bribes. The extremely rich are greedy and want more of the peoples money.

[fiath]

Originally posted by Unknown_K
I think that in the USA and in other high tech countries anybody who reverse engineers or distributes any code they dont own 100% wether it is old games, windows xp, emulators, old roms, etc will be prosecuted or at least shut down. this trend will change when the current president (and republican party) gets thrown out of the white house.

Is this since after the DMCA? If not, how come bleem! "won"?

As far as I understood, reverse engineering is a legal right. You just cannot distribute any knowledge gained.

This is certainly true in Europe, but I assumed also true in the US?