Keeping Children's Software on a Networked Server?

mache asks: "I have a seven year old son with his own Windows 98 machine and he has many, many educational and game CDs that his stupid parents have purchased for him. These CDs often get lost and scratched. Many of these applications will not operate without the CD being in the CD drive. At an average of $20 or more, I want to be able to load a CD on to a Linux server once and then access the application through Samba. I understand that there are some applications out there that provide a 'virutal' CD player interface to a remote server and may defeat the copy protection mechanisms (deliberately placed bad tracks) in place on kid/game/educational CDs. I bought the CDs legitimately and just want to use them legitimately rather than having my son destroy them, forcing me to buy him new ones. Does anyone have a recommendation for a Windows-based application that would produce a 'virutal' CD player on a Windows 98 machine and also defeat currently used CD copy protection allowing some sort of CD image to reside on my in-home networked server."

Comments

try

[cassidyc]

www.daemon-tools.net has tools for copying CDs and copes with safedisk protection

CJC

Not true anymore.

[Chasing Amy]

That was true four or five years ago, but not today. There are many copy-protection mechanisms in place on contemporary CD-ROM games which really do require the CD to be inserted, such as SafeDisc, SafeDisc 2, LaserLok, and Securom.

Fortunately, Daemon Tools defeats most forms of such CD-check copy protection, and new fixes are being incorporated all the time.

http://www.daemon-tools.net/main.htm is the place to get Daemon Tools. It's a virtual CD-ROM drive which not only mounts CD images, it will also emulate the proper security mechanism that the origional CD would have.

Anyone who wants to copy a copy-protected CD, or host CD images for a virtual CD-ROM drive, should read the tutorials on that site I referenced.

Re:Not true anymore.

[Chasing Amy]

> Well, that's particularly nasty.

It especially annoys me since I collect games, and eventually hope to be able to afford to build a home arcade machine containing a PC running all the games I've collected. Now, in that case I can't be inserting discs all the time; I'd want to run everything with no hassles from a nice custom interface for selecting games.

[Incidentally, anyone interested in building home arcade PCs should check this site out, if they haven't already: http://www.arcadecontrols.speedhost.com/arcade.htm ]

That means, of course, that I have to either make images for Daemon Tools of each CD and have them on the hard drive along with the installed game, effectively doubling the amount of hard drive space needed per game; or, find "cracks" for the game which let them run without the CD, from sites like GameCopyWorld, and crack each game the same way a pirate would.

Which, of course, highlights a big flaw in the game copy protection scheme: it just doesn't work. People who want to pirate a game can simply upload a CD image, and then anyone can download and play it with Daemon Tools. Or, people who want to pirate a game can "crack" the game executable to not check for the CD, or just download a pre-made crack from one of the big sites, and then upload the installed game along with the crack and a registry file to transfer the needed registry settings, or make a simple custom installer for it before uploading.

So, the game protection is effectively useless. People often say that the goal of copy protection is to prevent "casual" copying, like copying for a friend. In the case of a game, though, that's not going to be a big problem; the only thing it solves is people installing on multiple computers, but of course kids smart enough to be installing and sharing computer games are probably smart enough to find the cracks anyway.

And of course, having to go out and find cracks for games I actually own has introduced me to all the best ways of getting games I don't own. So copy protection may actually *promote piracy* in the long run. I'll admit I've downloaded games I don't own. However, I never would have done so if I hadn't been introduced to piracy by the need to crack games I already owned.

In the long run, the best thing is just to leave content unprotected--because anyone who wants to pirate it, will. Trying to prevent copying is a waste of resources, and in fact just pisses buyers off.

Just my opinion...

Re:Not true anymore.

[Mr Guy]

Makes you wonder what they are really trying to teach their kids.

Re:Not true anymore.

[dougmc]

... effectively doubling the amount of hard drive space needed per game;

So what? With 120GB drives on sale at Fry's for $109 (the link is good as of 06/14/02, not sure how long it'll stay good), you can afford to do full installs AND include a disk image. Even if your game has 4 CD's at 700 MB each and takes 3 GB installed, that's only 1/20th of your disk -- about $6 worth for your $40

Yes, it's obscene how large games are getting, and how much space they take. But then again, it's also obscene how large disks are getting and how cheap they are :)

(And yes, these are 5400 RPM drives. So what? They can still do 20 MB/s quite easily. And yes, they're IDE, but for a computer for playing games, that's just fine.)

Did you buy or lease

[ThePilgrim]

As the EULA probably says you only leased the program, I'd return the faulty disk to the company with a stamped self addressed envalope and a writable CD and a covering letter to the effect that you would like them to copy onto the CD sufficent SW to be able to continue using their program.

Daemon Tools

[DiSKiLLeR]

There is a program called Daemon Tools.

It runs on Win95/98/ME, and NT4/W2K/XP.

It'll mount .iso images, cdrwin, clonecd, and other cd and dvd images. It also emulates various cd copy protection schemes.

Programs/apps/games think its a real CD in a real CD-Rom drive, because it installs a 'virtual SCSI card', and 'virtual SCSI CDrom/DVDrom'. Its as real as it can get. But the driver doesn't talk to actual physical hardware, it just talks to a file on your local or remote filesystem.

So. Use CloneCD (or whatever, but clonecd is definitely best) and image all your kids' CDs onto the linux server. And use daemon tools to mount the cd images over samba.

I hardly use any CDs anymore. I have literally 100s of CloneCD image's on my fileserver, and just mount them using Daemon-Tools over Samba.

You will LOVE this program!

D.

Crack the progam

[chrestomanci]

As I have said before in a previous post, If you have legitimately purchased the software, and the copy protection is causing you problems, you are IMHO, perfectly entitled to crack the copy protection.

There are essentially two ways to crack the program. (besides just making a CDR copy).

1. Search the web or usenet for a crack, produced by one of the many cracking organisations. This usually works well for teenage games, especially those popular at LAN parties. I don't know if it will work for educational stuff interned for kids.

A google search for "<program name> no-cd crack" should produce results, but be prepared for many annoying pop-ups, pornographic banners, broken links etc.

2. Alternatively you could crack it yourself, as this is often quite easy if you have programming skills.

The usual approach is to run the program under a debugger, tracing the program as it starts up with & without the key disc present. The just patch the executable so that the check is not performed, or the result ignored.

Needless to say, you should only apply such techniques to programs you own, and you should not share the results with anyone who does not also own a legit copy of the software.

VMware can spoof a CD drive

[Thing 1]

I have used CloneCD or Undisker to create an .ISO image, and then mounted that as a CD drive in a virtual machine under VMware .

Yes, it's a bit more work, and the daemon-tools that everyone's mentioning look nice, but TMTOWTDI, and for me one of the other ways is with VMware.

The other benefit being, if you set it up right, the critter will have his own "sandbox" and can blown up the VM but it's really easy to back up the VM's directory, so when s/he does take the machine down, you can bring it back in a couple minutes of copying, rather than a couple hours of reinstalling.

The drawback? Fast games won't be.

I use CDspace

[Polo]

I've used CDSpace for quite a while and really really like it.

Look at http://www.cdspace.com to find it.

It's not free, but it's inexpensive. It has worked on EVERY game I've ever bought. You just scan an image into a disk file and then you can just mount the file.

If you're setting up your kid's machine, I'd probably mount the files locally. Also, for minimum hassle, I would create a whole bunch
of drives, one for each application so you don't have to switch files.