Games X Copy Stirs Backup Controversy

Thanks to GameSpy for its article covering the unveiling of a utility called Games X Copy at this year's CES show in Las Vegas. This commercially-sold gaming backup option claims: "You no longer need to fear losing your expensive PC game collection to scratches, skipping, or freezing... Now you can simply back them up and put the expensive original in a safe place, and the backup will play on your PC just like the original." The maker of this soon-to-launch utility, 321 Studios, has faced lawsuits previously regarding its DVD X Copy software, and a prominently marketed, gaming-specific backup product is sure to cause sparks - the GameSpy article writer comments: "No matter how much 321 Studios claims that parents with the most honorable intentions are its target market, it's easy to see where it would be the perfect item for unscrupulous gamers to copy software to give to or trade with their friends. It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against."

Comments

Piracy of all sorts

[rmull]

No matter how suitable this product is to game piracy, I doubt many will be sold with that end in mind. Those who pirate games pirate all kinds of software. Frankly, I don't see how they're going to make any money at all.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[jakoz]

On the other hand, they have by now had DVD X Copy as a test case, so they must be making something to bother continuing...

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Babbster]

One big difference: Relatively few people have DVD recorders while a majority of PC owners by now have a CD-R, and CDs are still the primary distribution method for big games. Second, slightly less-important difference: CD recordable media is dirt cheap while the price of DVD-/+R media is still significant.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Zork the Almighty]

Anyone with kids will want to copy their own games. Kids destroy EVERYTHING.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[gl4ss]

it's for people who are unable, unwilling, don't have the experience or for any other reason can't find the stuff online. If they would, they could have been doing this for several years with OTHER copying software, with cd drive virtualisation software or with cdfree cracks for the games.

however, real pirates(_PROFESSIONALS_ that REALLY hurt the games biz) have factories for pumping out the cd's/dvd's(and as such are perfect copies, don't need modded consoles) so this hardly has any effect on that(copy protections of any kind hardly have had any effect on it, they just annoy the users to ever increasing new levels). It's just a nice wizard for cd cloning easily.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids destroy EVERYTHING.
Not until later.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Goldberg's Pants]

The thing that pisses me off with the attitude of the gaming industry is the fact that NOBODY I know who gets "warez" copies them from other people. They download them all. I can't remember the last time any friend of mine got a game by copying an original disk. Christ, I think it must have been 5 years ago. This bullshit about casual copying is nonsense.

As a parent to a two year old boy, I would be fully behind ANY product that let me back up my software that, under fair use laws, I should be able to backup anyway! All the Securom bullshit does on games is screw over legitimate consumers, while the game is still rampantly pirated.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Dr. Manhattan]

Kids destroy EVERYTHING.

I don't know how my 1.5 year old knew the exact worst moment to yank the USB cable out while I was installing my new joystick, but he did. Took me two hours to get the thing running again.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[MikShapi]

Actually, you could get 4 700MB CD's for the price you get a single 4.7GB DVD-R. And it's as true in the States as it is here in Israel.

I don't know what you're counting - amount of storage space or the quantity of plastic, but for those of us who're buying storage space, DVD-R's are roughly twice as cheap.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[the_ed_dawg]

Exactly. As soon as the game manufacturer decides to offer a replacement disc free of charge (because we are 'licensing,' after all), I'll complain about copying software. I won't forget when they sold me a broken disc of Riven and refused to give me a replacement because it took too long for me to get to the broken disc and realize the problem.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[anthony_philipp]

really? almost everyone i know who has copied games recently has done it from friends. why? because the warez versions are hard to find one, and they are of lower quality. secondly since they rely on cracks, they are harder to update, whereas if you can get a working iso of the disk then you can load it with a virtual drive, which is as good as having the original. the other big means of piracy is installing from a friends cd and using a no cd crack, but this often does not allow for updates so it is not the prefered choice. but really, as much as some of my friends pirate they still buy many more games than most people i know do. also i do not think this software is going to be used for the advertised purpose. mostly because clone cd had a similar idea in mind when it was working on its software, and almost everyone i know who downloaded it used it solely as a means to beat copy protection and then as a virtual drive to be able to play. the only form of copy protection ive seen that is not a hassle to legit players and is still effective is a cd key to play online. these are hard if not impossible to fake, and if you want to play online you basically need a legit key.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Radius9]

I am a game developer, and I have to say, I hate SecureROM games. I hate CD keys, and I hate having to have the CD to play the game. I have 4 machines in my house, plus 2 laptops, and trying to keep track of all my game originals is difficult, much less remembering to take it with me when I want to play on a laptop. I can't recall the last game I have bought where I couldn't get a warez version before it was available in stores. People will copy the game, and people will not pay for it. There is little I or anyone else can do to stop it, and SecureROM primarily just pisses off legitimate users. As for your statement about CD keys making games "hard if not impossible to fake, and if you want to play online you basically need a legit key", I disagree. Call Of Duty, which has an online play mode and requires both the original CD and a CD key, has both no-CD cracks and KeyGens available. They have both been available since the game came out, and requiring a CD-key hasn't stopped anyone from playing it online.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[SleazyC]

Correct me if I am wrong, but in order to make a copy of a game for a home console such as the PS2 or Gamecube you need special equipment that isn't usually available to consumers or even pirates.

Being from a third world country where games and movies are pirated freely I have yet to see a game that has been a perfect 1:1 copy that can play on a console that is unmodded. Most of the vendors that sell the copies of games also sell mod-chips and tell the people buying the games that they need modchips.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[orkysoft]

That last bit of your post, about it being possible to use fake CD-keys (aka serial numbers) sounds to me like the developers didn't choose a good serial number scheme.

For example, AFAIK, the serial numbers that come with Blizzard games, which you need to play online on Battle.net, are pretty damn hard to fake. You can find no-CD cracks for those games, but forget about keygenerators.

I could copy and use my backup discs of Starcraft/Broodwar without trouble, leaving the originals out of harm's way, without using a no-CD crack. They might have added CD-based copy protection to their games since then, but I do not know.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[trg83]

If the game industry wants to protect their IP while still not looking like the bad guy, they should just allow you to mail in a damaged original CD and they can priority mail you a new original as a trade. After all, if you're dumb enough to destroy or scratch up a disk, you deserve the punishment of not playing your game for a week or so. I have never had a CD become unusable--people I know who take the CD out of the machine and throw it onto a dusty desk have lost CDs. The CD case is there for a reason!

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[armachd]

Hrmmm... I guess you're one of the lucky people that don't belong to the Neverwinter Nights Split CD Club. Congratulations! I've also had a CD-Rom totally trash my FS2002 install CD. I called MS to get it replaced. They said, "Sure! And make sure you send $29 with your damaged CD." Nice. Albeit, I backed up my FS2004 CDs on the first day of my purchase. Hard lesson. I suppose you can't stop the wrath of the universe when she wants to screw up your expensive CDs.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

You're still working from the misconception that the game industry beancounters do: that anyone who is likely to copy the game will even see any form of copy protection.

Put it this way - if you're going to copy games, chances are you got it from a mate who also copies games or you downloaded it (or you download a crack that lets you copy the CD and use the game with a backup cd). In either event, the stuff you download was probably ripped, cleaned up and uploaded to an ftp server within 10 microseconds of the game hitting the shops, if not before. The only people bothered by copy protection are, and always will be, the legitimate buyers. Copy protection does not prevent anyone but the technically inept, internet ignorant buyer from making a copy.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Frizzle Fry]

If you think kids are bad: a few weeks ago my cat walked across the keyboard while I was in my BIOS setup, and I didn't realize that he changed some settings. It took me hours to figure out what was going on.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[trg83]

I overlooked one small item. The manufacturer should not charge for this service.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Goldberg's Pants]

really? almost everyone i know who has copied games recently has done it from friends. why? because the warez versions are hard to find one, and they are of lower quality.

That's complete nonsense. The downloads off the net are NOT that hard to find (even my "not too bright that department" friends can easily get them), and are exact copies of the original and, if you mount them in a virtual drive, you can bypass the protection anyway.

In short, they are indistinguishable from the real thing.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Goldberg's Pants]

Warcraft 3 uses Securom. With a recent patch, Blizzard started requiring the regular EXE file to play online, you can't use a no-cd crack anymore.

What this has done is screw over customers like me who have problems running games with Securom. I own the game, but can't play it online anymore courtesy of Blizzard adding this new line of security. I guess maybe the exe can be hacked for cheating. If so, that's fair enough to add a CRC check to Battle Net, but if it's to stop people playing without a CD that's just retarded, especially when so many people routinely have problems with Securom.

You know the protection method is retarded when Infogrames (they ain't Atari to me, and never will be) were recommending people use no-cd cracks on the recent Neverwinter Nights expansion due to Securom causing so many problems.

At least Safedisc, so far, doesn't seem to have caused many problems. (Feel free to post evidence proving me wrong. I fucking hate Macrovision.)

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Anonymous Coward]

By that token, Sony should replace your TV free-of-charge if you hit it with a baseball bat! After all, if you're dumb enough to destroy or scratch up a disk, you deserve the punishment of not playing your game for a week or so. I'd argue that any damage caused by improper use is the responsibility of the customer.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[pantycrickets]

What this has done is screw over customers like me who have problems running games with Securom. I own the game, but can't play it online anymore courtesy of Blizzard adding this new line of security. I guess maybe the exe can be hacked for cheating. If so, that's fair enough to add a CRC check to Battle Net, but if it's to stop people playing without a CD that's just retarded, especially when so many people routinely have problems with Securom.

Local CRC checks and the like will never work anyway. Whatever the EXE does to calculate the CRC to send to their servers can be faked. The only thing that sometimes works is a serial number that needs to be sent to the server to be authenticated against a DB of known serial numbers. Not just an algorithm that can match any one of a couple or a few million numbers.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Zork the Almighty]

I don't think "free of charge" is fair to the manufacturer. There's the cost of producing the disc, plus the costs associated with keeping an inventory of excess discs. I think a fair charge would be about $2-5 plus shipping. I think a better solution is to allow customers to make their own copies.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[mabhatter654]

I use GameDrive For my games...It does burn a lot of disk space, but space is cheap nowdays. I like it alot, but it needs some userfriendliness...like automatically loading CDs when you click a shortcut or something...it's not kid friendly which makes it fustrating for "little people" use because they can't do it themselves...but I suppose you could burn off some drive letters keeping them all loaded at once.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Deosyne]

Heh, yeah, learned that one the heard way when I came out one morning to discover that my three year old daughter was learning that a Sharpie is the most fun toy ever. I did get it off of the monitor screens fairly easily, but had to use acetone to get it off of the table and left some nice smooth patches behind. Unfortunately a few CDs were lost as well, so I now lock those away and just make copies of the ones that I need often and can't get cracks for. I'd like to copy them all and stash the originals in a safe, but that's just too much copying for my lazy ass. :)

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[limekiller4]

Goldberg's Pants writes:
"As a parent to a two year old boy, I would be fully behind ANY product that let me back up my software that, under fair use laws, I should be able to backup anyway!"

Technically correct but misleading because you're only presenting one side of the coin.

You have the right to back up the material. The maker of the product is under no legal obligation whatsoever to make it simple or even possible for you to do so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm on the side of the consumer on this one, but there is a distinction here.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Thing 1]

So use Undisker and Daemon Tools (Google for them both).

Undisker creates ISOs out of your CDs.

Daemon Tools lets you create "virtual" CD drives, connect the ISOs to them, and then you can "change" CDs in your virtual drives just by clicking a few keys. No digging through CD cases.

Some manufacturers have coded their games to not run if Daemon Tools (and the like) are running. I won't buy those games.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Thing 1]

because the warez versions are hard to find

What, are you living under a rock?

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[Goldberg's Pants]

Yes, but the problem with that is hard drive space. Given how little I have (and my system is already maxed out on drives) a couple of ISO's and it's game over for doing anything.

As for developers coding in stuff to not run with Daemon Tools, the developers of DT invariably have a new version out within a few days and it's back to square one for the developers of the games that won't run if you have Daemon Tools. HAHAHA!

I think it's bloody disgusting they do that. We already sign away our souls on the license agreements. It's a bit rich effectively dictating what you can and can't have on your system.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[jpop32]

I don't think "free of charge" is fair to the manufacturer.

Yes, it is. I work in a company that produces children educational software. We replace damaged discs for free. Out of 30+ thousands sold, so far we replaced less than 50.

And, yes, we use SecuROM. :-) SecuROM is not there to thwart dedicated priates, because it just can't do that. SecuROM is there to stop casual copying by end users, and it does that very well.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[trg83]

>By that token, Sony should replace your TV free-of-charge if you hit it with a baseball bat! Yes, they should--if it costs them less than 50 cents to produce the whole damn thing.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[trg83]

Furthermore, when you buy a TV, you are BUYING A TV. When you buy a computer game, you are buying the license to use that game. So, if the company does not make a replacement available at very diminished cost, you would be forced to relicense an item for which you already had a valid license.

Re:Piracy of all sorts

[gl4ss]

Well I don't know where you are from but for psx and for ps2 too there have been non black discs that run on unmodded hardware sold by pirate industry(eastern europe at least).

for gamecube I don't know(i faintly remember something about a barcode on the disc).

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.

So it's supports whatever the industry is fighting for?

Re:Huh?

[carou]

Sure - when you got your back to the wall, the only thing left to do is to turn around and fight.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!

Avoidance

[101percent]

Game distributors should be committed to re-placing damaged or broken medium to nullify the "back-up" arguement. All too often we see developers make the claim that you don't own the game, your just purchasing the rights to use it, but when the disc breaks or some such they will simply not care about it. Really they owe you a new disc/cart within a certain reasonable framework, such as a two-year period, because you haven't just purchased the disc, you purchased the rights to use the game. Game X would still prove useful for hobbiest who collect games, but I honestly doubt that Game X can back up those old atari and nintendo carts we all have lying around.

Personally I believe that you do not have unlimited rights to do as you wish with purchased copyrighted material. You may not see the current system as wrong, but that doesn't give you the right to obfusicate the copyrights of others by distributing copies unofficially. If you claim that freedom matters than don't obstruct someone elses freedoms to do as they please with their creations by trying to nullify their rights to distrobution.

I think Game X is wrong. They are clearly violating the DMCA. It's going to be ill percieved here, but I will say that Free Software advocates, hackers, and the like have proven themselves to be simply criminals by supporting things like DeCSS. If you can't play DVD on linux than don't break the law. Lobby to companies to legitimately get that feature or try to get governmental intervention.

Re:Avoidance

[Unordained]

... and when the company goes out of business?

You have a right, protected by Congress, to make copies of this sort. It's called 'fair use', and it covers all sorts of stuff. You've purchased the right to use copyrighted material, and you have the right to protect your investment by making a copy.

People who ask to make use of their rights are never in the wrong. Companies that provide products to make it easier for people to make use of their rights are also not in the wrong. This software is legal, its use as advertised is legal, and the people buying it have every right to make use of it for its stated purpose.

You've set up a straw-man argument, implying that the majority of people here believe "you have unlimited rights to do as you wish with purchased copyrighted material" -- you'll find that's not true. If anything, the people here most likely have a better understanding of copyright law than the common public. Why? Because most of them deal with intellectual property day-in and day-out. It's simply not fair to bundle "Free Software advocates" and "hackers" (in the sense you seem to be implying) together.

As to government intervention: government intervention is what gave us copyright law, 'fair use', and the DMCA. Maybe someone can find the details for us, but I'm fairly sure our government has also ruled that there is a conflict between the DMCA and 'fair use' when it comes to DVD's in particular -- and as I recall, it was decided that 'fair use' wins. I really hope someone digs that up for us, I'm heading to bed.

In the end, that's your stuff they're selling to you, or at least your grandchildren's, our society's. Intellectual property, once published, is destined to become ours, collectively. You have every right to archive it as you see fit (protected by 'fair use') considering we can't trust those who produce this stuff to make sure we get what's ours. Extreme? That's the price they pay for copyrights, the price they agree to when they get in the business of producing stuff, whether it be games, music, images, text, video (etc.) or a combination thereof.

Re:Avoidance

[Tuxinatorium]

but I will say that Free Software advocates, hackers, and the like have proven themselves to be simply criminals by supporting things like DeCSS. If you can't play DVD on linux than don't break the law. Lobby to companies to legitimately get that feature or try to get governmental intervention.

You might as well wear a 10-foot billboard that says "I'm a troll"! That wasn't a subtle enough troll to make any but the stupidest slashdotters bite.

Re:Avoidance

[Creepy Crawler]

>>If anything, the people here most likely have a better understanding of copyright law than the common public. Why? Because most of them deal with intellectual property day-in and day-out.

Unless you're a lawyer who has had judgements for copyright suits, you dont know diddly.

Reason is that the idea of "Fair Use" must ALWAYS be tested in court. There isn't a hard and fast definition of that idea.

Re:Avoidance

[Genom]

Unless you're a lawyer who has had judgements for copyright suits, you dont know diddly.

Reason is that the idea of "Fair Use" must ALWAYS be tested in court. There isn't a hard and fast definition of that idea.

I can't disagree with the fact that only IP laywers would really know ALL the ins and outs of copyright law...but I disagree with your statemet that ALL cases must be tested in court for validity. In our current (corp-friendly) legal climate, validity isn't exactly a good measure of what's "legal" ;P

Case in point: I just (finally) bought a copy of Icewind Dale II (long live the memory of BIS!). In the manual it states (and I paraphrase, as I don't have the manual) in part of the legalese:

"You are allowed to use this on one computer...you are allowed to make one copy of the game CDs for backup purposes..."

It states that I am allowed to make a backup. I don't think anyone could argue that it's not within "Fair Use" to make a copy of that CD -- they explicitly *state* that it's allowed. This isn't something that needs to be tested in court -- it's right there.

Now, admittedly I haven't *tried* to copy it yet, but my suspicion, based on previous experience with trying to backup CRPGs, is that there's some form of copy protection on the CD, to prevent any copy that I would make from being recognized by the game as a "proper" CD.

Therefore, by adding the copy protection to the CD, they effectively prevent me from exercising the right that they themselves granted me. This is a problem.

Never fear, however, for enterprising individuals have "fixed" the problem by making a "no-cd" or "cd-copy" patch, which when applied removes the CD checks, and/or allows my copy to work as a fully "proper" CD. Right? Wrong...using these constitutes a violation of the DMCA, and is thus illegal...

Does that stop people from using them to remove the CD checks from games they legally own, or allow them to have a working backup copy, so they can keep the originals in a safe place? Nope. They do it anyway. Does it allow people to make unauthorized, illegal copies of the game? Yes it does.

Now, this "Games X Copy" software appears to do something roughly similar -- to allow you to make a working backup copy (although in a different way, instead of modifying the game's files, it modifies the way the CD is read and burned...but the function is similar). Does it allow for the (completely legal, granted) backup of legally purchased games? Yep. Does it allow unauthorized, illegal copies? Most likely it does.

The same arguments can be made in meatspace about a common tool, such as a crowbar. The crowbar can be used for the completely legal opening of crates, boxes, doors, etc... It can also be used to illegally gain entrance to a building or storage container. Does this make the crowbar inherantly illegal? No it doesn't. The crowbar's intended purpose is not to do illegal things, but legal ones. This is why you could walk down to your local hardware store and buy one right now. Owning a crowbar does not make one a felon, nor does it cause people to break into other people's stuff.

In copyright terms, I believe this is generally referred to as "substantial, non-infringing use", or something similar.

I'd argue that a commercially marketed (or even freely available - commercial intent has no real bearing here) piece of software, with the specified intent of creating legal, authorized backup copies of games (or other software) would fall into the same category as the afore-mentioned crowbar. Sure, it can be used for good or ill, but it's intended purpose was not to infringe, regardless of the other ways it could be used.

Unfortunately, in our (US) current legal environment, it's unlikely the courts would see it that way, even in light of the explicit backup provision.

Additionally, it's apparent that the corporate types don't really understand the "pirates" -- the "pirates" are going to

Re:Avoidance

[Genom]

Ick...should have previewed. Sorry for the ill-closed italics.

Re:Avoidance

[Rick the Red]

That wasn't a subtle enough troll to make any but the stupidest slashdotters bite.

The list of "stupidest slashdotters" includes you, then, eh?

Re:Avoidance

[Tuxinatorium]

nah, to bite means to confuse the troll with an earnest post.

Yep, it's really there...

[benjamindees]

It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.

Nice to see that these are the types of intellectual giants we're up against.

Double negation?

[apocamok]

"It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against."
You would think this would be considered a good thing by the industry...

Tricky double negations :-)

Re:Double negation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, pet peeve of mine, since I'm sort of an armchair linguist... Double negation does not necessarily == affirmation. There are plenty of languages that use double negation, triple negation or more. It is simply a way of emphasizing negation, not negating the negation. Granted that sentence was really hard to parse, but normally it is very easy to understand a double negation in context. I just really hate grammar nazi-ism.

Re:Double negation?

[CFTM]

Maybe linquists and logicians see things differently because in the world of logic (Save Hegelian logic but they'd still be almost equivalent) a double negation can be removed with no affect on the truth value of the statement ie without changing it. Hegel would say the statement has changed but it's still the same, hard to explain easier to use a diagram. I'm not saying you're wrong, just offering my understanding from the perspective of logic on the topic, plus I skipped a lot of my Symbollic Logic classes so I could be wrong :)

Game Copy X=Ripoff

[mrshowtime]

O.K. there is a B.S. program that will copy any game disc perfectly. Yeah, right. Even with the plethora of of cd/dvd copying software out there it still is not an easy task copying some of today's games. Also, the game industry will always be ahead of these "all in one" copy programs. Irregardless of if you can actually make an "easy" backup of your game, it does not propagate rampant piracy as one would think. Look at Unreal Tournament. Think you are going to give your buddy a copy so you both can play online? Wrong. You have to connect to the internet to play and it checks your serial number. Newer discs have inperfections purposely in them and the program scans for those inpefections and if it does not detect them, the game will not run. Ultimately, the game publishers and movie studios greatest "enemy" is the casual copier, not ripoffs from Hong Kong or counterfeit games/dvds. I always scratch my cds/dvds, mainly because I am a laxy slobbo that never puts them back in their cases. Do I really deserve the right to backup my games/movies? :)

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Rallion]

You realize that independent servers can bypass those serial checks, right? And that those servers can also allow the use of game executables that have the CD-check software stripped out? And, in fact, in a few increasingly rare cases, a really good image format and a virtual drive are all you need, the EXE won't be able to tell the difference anyhow!

Trust me. It's really easy for anybody to do.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[JavaLord]

. Look at Unreal Tournament. Think you are going to give your buddy a copy so you both can play online? Wrong. You have to connect to the internet to play and it checks your serial number.

FYI-Unreal Tournament doesn't check for a unique serial number when you go online. I believe half-life does.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do I really deserve the right to backup my games/movies?"

Yes.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right.

Unreal Tournament doesn't.
UT2003, however, *does*.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Nos.]

Half-Life did/sort of does. Now instead of a CD-Key, you have a SteamID - basically the same thing. A unique identifier that says, you have paid, and can play. However, the nice thing now about Steam is that, I can now safely throw away my HL-CD. Its useless.

Since I've signed up for my Steam account (requries a CD-Key), if I wipe out my machine, I just have to download the latest copy of Steam, and install it, log in with my username(email)/password and I can play. If I want to install another Steam-supported mod, it just takes a couple of clicks in the Steam interface (and the time to download and install). No more searching for the right version of the mod on the net and worrying about signing up for accounts just to download a mod.

Now admittedly, Steam still has its share of problems, but this is not a bad way to setup games that are mostly used only for online play. It would be nice to see a LAN enabled version though, so I could play the game without connecting to the Internet. Valve says its coming.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[exick]

For the love of FUCK, stop using the word 'irregardless'.

And yes, you have the right to backup your games and movies even if you are a "laxy" slob. Also, there's this thing called the Internet. One of the neat things it lets you do is update software you own in case the software maker wants to add some new features or functionality. You should check it out.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

that is *nice* but the poster mentioned UT, not UT2K3.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[CFTM]

Why because you think it is not a word? The following is from http://www.m-w.com/

Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.

Words are merely symbollic representations of ideas, thus they can be created at any time by any person, I don't need a PhD in Linguistics to declare "bloaahph" a word which means "To stop whining about stupid shit".

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Rallion]

Words are symbolic representations of ideas meant for communication. If it's not generally accepted, with a defined meaning, it ultimately has none in society as a whole, or within whatever group one happens to be talking about.

Yeah...it's off-topic. Whatever.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[exick]

It's not because I don't think it's a word. It's because it's used improperly. If you want to use the word 'irregardless', be my guest. However, let's break it down:
ir- : a prefix meaning not
regard: to take into account; consider
-less: a suffix meaning without or lacking

So, if 'regardless' means without consideration, then 'irregardless' means NOT without consideration. In other words, it means the exact opposite of what the person using it is usually trying to say. If you insist upon using the word, at least use it properly.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[shaitand]

Absolutely, you have purchased the right to have a copy of the game for the rest of your life. Your license never expires, transcends media and lives forever. The other end is that nobody has an obligation to provide you with new media should you lose yours.

It doesn't matter how irresponsible you are with your media, you have the right to back it up (according to US copyright law) so that you can ensure that 20yrs from now you can use your license via an emulator. No matter how many times you destroy media.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[shaitand]

Heck, with clonecd and Daemon tools mounting the clonecd images directly you can play pretty much any game this way.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[limekiller4]

mrshowtime writes:
"Irregardless of ..."

Isn't a word. Stop using it.

"...if you can actually make an "easy" backup of your game, it does not propagate rampant piracy as one would think. Look at Unreal Tournament. Think you are going to give your buddy a copy so you both can play online? Wrong. You have to connect to the internet to play and it checks your serial number."

Actually, it does. You've only shown that you can defeat a very, very small slice of the gaming market. Further, from what I'm told the latest Final Fantasy is an MMORPG. I've sure seen that posted on the newsgroups a lot lately. Now I didn't see that with, say, Planetside. So my guess is that someone found a way past their scheme.

If you run the server code yourself you can (*gasp!) disable the authenticity checking.

So at best you've shown that an extremely small group is diverted and at worst you've shown that half of that extremely small group has been diverted.

"Newer discs have inperfections purposely in them and the program scans for those inpefections and if it does not detect them, the game will not run."

Sub-channel data, weak sectors. Yeah, a 2-sheep burner (which most are these days) can handle that no problem.

Please, go get Alcohol 120%. Ironically enough, you can find it on the groups right now. Then go to alt.binaries.games or something, find a game you find interesting, download it and burn it. Then play off that CD.

Please, have some ...small, infinitesimal clue about what you're talking about before you start blathering off like you've got one already. You look like a damned fool.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[limekiller4]

shaitand writes:
"It doesn't matter how irresponsible you are with your media, you have the right to back it up (according to US copyright law)..."

Technically correct but misleading because you're only presenting one side of the coin.

You have the right to back up the material. The maker of the product is under no legal obligation whatsoever to make it simple or even possible for you to do so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm on the side of the consumer on this one, but there is a distinction here.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[oskibear]

Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Vermifax]

"Isn't a word. Stop using it."

Irregardless is a word. Stop saying it isn't. It might not be standard English usage, but at least use the correct terminology when you decide to play grammar Nazi.

Dictionary.jpg

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[limekiller4]

Vermifax writes:
"Irregardless is a word. Stop saying it isn't. It might not be standard English usage, but at least use the correct terminology when you decide to play grammar Nazi."

"Irregardless" is as much a word as "flooberschnizzle," I suppose. If that's the guise under which you wish to be right, knock yourself out.

But if you think you can handle the stress of it all, I'll continue saying it isn't. That ok with you?

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Vermifax]

Which dictionary lists the term "flooberschnizzle"?

Irregardless is a word, because it has meaning, is used by people in spoken and written English and has been catalogued by Dictionary companies as being an English word. I doubt your "flooberschnizzle" has the same background.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[limekiller4]

Vermifax writes:
"Irregardless is a word, because it has meaning..."

Really? What does it mean?

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[Vermifax]

Non-standard synonym for regardless if you'd ever bothered with a dictionary.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[limekiller4]

Vermifax writes:
"Non-standard synonym for regardless if you'd ever bothered with a dictionary."

I just wanted you to tell me. This is a discussion, you know. You might want to work for it.

So it's two things -- according to you -- a synonym (means we already have a word for it) and non-standard. So basically it's a bovine version of something that works.

Gee, thanks Shakespeare, for doing your part in keeping the fire under the English language, always prodding it on, forcing it to grow.

Keep using "irregardless." And keep dealing with people telling you that you're a twit. I'll keep using it as an early warning device to spot people who get their panties in a bind whenever someone tells them they're wrong.

Much obliged.

Re:Game Copy X=Ripoff

[ASkGNet]

irregardless ( P ) adv.
Nonstandard
Regardless.

[Probably blend of irrespective, and regardless.]
Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

Not everything is by the rulebook.
Some forms sound horrible, but they are still right. You drive in the parkway but you park in the driveway :)

everything the industry has been fighting against

[TempeTerra]

"It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against."


Hooray! It's a good thing it doesn't go against everything the industry's been fighting for - then they'd really be in trouble.

Not really new or revolutionary.

[WhiteBandit]

There are a few programs that do just this already.

Alcohol 120
Blindwrite
CloneCD

They all do pretty decent jobs making 1:1 backup copies of software. Granted, there are some copy protection schemes they have trouble with (I believe Alcohol 120 had problems with Safecast2 for awhile. Not sure if they've fixed it yet), but all of them are being actively developed and reasonably priced if you're looking for that sort of thing.

Re:Not really new or revolutionary.

[Kelerain]

As long as they can do a proper raw dump of the formats, Daemon tools is a very nice piece of software to emulate the copy protection schemes. I am not sure how the linux side of things are, but lots of games require windows to run well at this point..

Re:Not really new or revolutionary.

[PyromanFO]

On Linux it's built into the filesystem, mounting a CD image is exactly the same as mounting a CD.

Not that most Linux games bother with copy protection anyway ;)

Re:Not really new or revolutionary.

[Firehawke]

With the one exception that I don't believe the CD image mounting will emulate bad sectors and other protection schemes. However, like you said, that's generally not an issue under Linux.

It has to be said, though: Daemon Tools is a windows user's best friend. I always write ISOs instead of straight to disc for my more complex disc types, so that I can test the image before wasting a blank. I also use it for a lot of my games-- I've got all three of the UT2003 discs sitting on my HD right now, though I almost wish I hadn't wasted my time since UT2004 is everything they promised in UT2003, but with a completely new pricetag.. *sigh*

Whoops, got offtopic there a sec. Anyway.. Daemon Tools is highly reccomended. Just keep checking for new versions every so often as the software companies blacklist it frequently. There's usually a new version within a DAY or two of such, though.

Re:Not really new or revolutionary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm still waiting for Money X Copy.

Re:Not really new or revolutionary.

[Bios_Hakr]

Most Linux games I have played do not require the CD. NWN and UT2k3 come to mind. You install, patch, then enter your CD-KEY. From that point on, the CD can stay in the box.

Daemon tools is entering a 'cold war' with Safedisk. I went out to get SW:KOTOR. I do use Daemon tools so I don't have to find the CDroms for my games. KOTOR installed fine, but then refused to run. I went back and installed from the actual CDROMs. This time, the game refused to load. Why? The error message reported that 'Disk emulation software was detected. Please remove this software and try agian'. Yep, it won't even run from the original media if Daemon tools is installed on your system.

Re:Not really new or revolutionary.

[WWWWolf]

Most Linux games I have played do not require the CD. NWN and UT2k3 come to mind. You install, patch, then enter your CD-KEY. From that point on, the CD can stay in the box.

I have also never ever seen a Linux game with any kind of CD copy protection, at least not one that I could notice. At least the Loki games were easily backed up with dd and cdrecord...

I think NWN has been the most generous game so far - you don't even need the CDs to install, just the CDkeys and game data...

"Irregardless"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh gods! You've used the forbidden word! You're in for it now!

Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[mraymer]

It's obvious: copy protection on games only hurts the paying customers. Things like SafeDisc adversely affect system performance, forcing the paying customers to fetch no-CD cracks in an effort to get the best performance. When paying customers get worse performance than the pirates, it tends to make them wonder just why they are paying in the first place.

People are always going to pirate games. It's just too easy to copy 1s and 0s. I think the solution is the opposite of what the game industry is doing: Sell me more than the disc. I want physical items that are worth more to me, such as a big thick manual, maps, posters, maybe even a player's guide, right in the same box with the shiny disc. I would imagine I'm not alone on this and that if gamers received something more tangible than a disc with their $50, perhaps they would be more inclined to purchase.

This post is not meant to advocate piracy. It's meant to advocate customer rights. Remember when the customer was always right? Now the customer is a consumer, and the consumer is a lying dirty pirate who needs his entertainment sufficiently crippled to prevent him from stealing. Well, this attitude is exactly the sort of thing fueling the pirates.

Really, the best way to stop piracy is to actually make the game worth $50. Like I said, give us more tangible items in the box, give us the freedom to copy the disc without special hardware or software hacks, and don't cripple the software we purchase with things like SafeDisc.

I could rant on, but I'm preaching to the converted here anyway, I'm sure.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[smcv]

Exactly. If I can find one, I always apply a no-CD crack to any game I install.

Back in the days of 3GB hard disks and smallish games, when you installed a couple of hundred megabytes and streamed the music, video and some of the sound from the CDs (see: Jedi Knight), it was reasonable to have to put the CD in the drive before playing.

Now that games don't let you play from the CD, partly for performance reasons and partly because the game is on several CDs anyway (like Unreal Tournament 2003 and its 3 CDs, of which about 2.5 CDs of data are copied to the hard disk and the last half a CD consists of optional mod tools and Linux binaries), I don't see any reason why I should be required to dig out the correct CD every time I play the game, just to reassure the game that I have a legal copy of it.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[Twylite]

Copy protection hurts paying customers and the providers. I don't play many games ... actually I don't play any anymore. The last three I have purchased wouldn't run on my computer, and in all cases it came down to issues with the copy protection.

I think the book idea is a good one. A lot of old role-playing games used to do this ("You see a box. Read paragraph 230."), and it was pretty effective at making people buy the original.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[vasqzr]

I remember back in those days, doing one of two things to get past this:

downloaded a file from a local BBS that had an answer to all those questions

or, have a xeroxed copy of the instruction manual (or the required pages)

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[YomikoReadman]

If you want UT2k3 with no CD, go grab the V2225 patch, and install that. It removes the CD check from the install, and lets you play with no CD at all. Go Epic!!

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[nukem1999]

Once I went and bought a value pack of like 5 CD games, one of which being an Ultima game (couldn't tell you which one). Whoever published this value pack lacked the foresight to include the manuals for any game, so when I hit one of those anti-pirate questions, I was out of luck. If I had downloaded it, or even gotten it from a friend, I'm sure I would have gotten the manual exerpt with the answers.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[PainKilleR-CE]

People are always going to pirate games. It's just too easy to copy 1s and 0s. I think the solution is the opposite of what the game industry is doing: Sell me more than the disc. I want physical items that are worth more to me, such as a big thick manual, maps, posters, maybe even a player's guide, right in the same box with the shiny disc. I would imagine I'm not alone on this and that if gamers received something more tangible than a disc with their $50, perhaps they would be more inclined to purchase.

I'd also add this: if I'm going to buy a game for $50 and I'm not supposed to copy it, the least they could do is supply a decent jewel case. This is especially a problem with multi-disc releases, such as NWN and UT2k3, both of which had the discs in little paper envelopes. I don't even mind the cardboard-like cases, as long as they have the plastic holders for the discs rather than just having sleeves, because the sleeves themselves scratch the discs.

Considering that I have a box and a half full of game manuals and other stuff that came with games back in the 90s, I don't mind so much that I don't get a lot of extra stuff in the box. However, I do mind that I have to buy stacks of jewel cases when the games should come with them. Sell them to me in DVD cases for all I care, I just want the discs protected to some degree beyond a dust cover.

Beyond that, there isn't a disc that can't be copied out there somehow, otherwise it wouldn't have been distributable on any significant scale. Almost anything you can do on a CD that can be read in a CD-ROM drive can be mimicked by a CD-R drive with the right software. Just protect the discs you ship and go after the people that are really pirating your games. I'm sick of downloading CD-cracks to make games playable and I'm even more sick of copying disc 3 of 5 for my friend who found out this one disc in the game wouldn't play because you shipped it in cheap packaging. Nothing better than a game with so much obvious expense at least in the artwork (to take up 5 discs) being sold in such cheap packaging that there's a 10-20% failure rate of the discs.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with no-CD cracks is that they're fashionable only at the initial release of the game. This is a problem for games that have frequent, small patches. You can always find nocd cracks for version 1.0 and 1.1 of a game, but try and find a no cd crack for 1.4045 of a two-year old game.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[Jerf]

This is a compromise I can live with even if I don't fully approve of it: Use the protection when the games comes out and patch it out of existence later.

The main problem with anti-piracy measures is there is this sick idea that they should be 100% effective, so it's worth annoying the customer, crippling the game, etc. They don't need to be 100% effective, just "greater then the value lost by the company", and since the value curve is very steep (downhill) in computer games, it's worth removing the pirate protection later.

The fact of the matter is that as of this moment, nobody is financially hurt in any significant way if I 'pirate' Quake 1 right now. (Could conceivably change if they were to re-release it as is, but that is unlikely.) Why worry about it so? Sure, it's illegal and arguably unethical, but why should the companies care to sweat it?

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

People are always going to pirate games. It's just too easy to copy 1s and 0s.

That what they say about human cloning. It just doesn't work! Sure, scientifically it does but there's just something different about the copy. Don't you watch any movies? You can't replace a dead child, and you can't fucking copy KotOR!! One suddenly doesn't like apple dumplings (but ... it was your favorite desert!) and the other is labled with a sharpie. IT JUST DOESN'T WORK!!!

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[xplenumx]

Really, the best way to stop piracy is to actually make the game worth $50.

Or you could just wait a few months until the price drops. When you're paying $50 for a game, you're paying for novelty of having the latest, "greatest" game.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[moonbender]

Fortunately, very few companies bother to release patches and updates 2 years after a game retailed.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[Rhys]

Dead on, but becoming even more so due to the prevelance of ultra-portable laptops. I don't like having to connect my external cd drive to play games.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[(trb001)]

I think the solution is the opposite of what the game industry is doing: Sell me more than the disc. I want physical items that are worth more to me, such as a big thick manual, maps, posters, maybe even a player's guide, right in the same box with the shiny disc.

Perfect example...the Ultima series. I copied Ultima 6 from a buddy of mine, until I realized how much I wanted the cloth map, the Compendium, the stupid little black gem that came with it, etc. Ultima really gave you your money's worth, giving you items that made you feel like you were a part of the game.

Another form of copy protection that I actually liked was using a code wheel. I remember Bard's Tale III had one that we were able to copy, but it was a pain in the ass. You were also able to play the first level until a certain point where it would ask you about the password. Good idea from those guys.

--trb

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[CFTM]

Although Blizzard still puts stupid CD checks on all their games they do add value to the game with Battle.net. Although it requires they maintain the service, it's really quite brilliant. Pirate the game all you want but you're going to have trouble getting on to B-net without a version of the game which you purchased. Not to mention they also keep releasing patches and reinventing games two years after they've been released (ie 1.10 patch for Diablo 2 reinvented the game).

Blizzard is a good company they tend to treat the customer as a customer and not some stingy pirate ... hell I remember back with WarCraft 2 when the Kali online gaming community kept petitioning them to truly randomize starting locations so as to make the game more intriguing. At the time it was a small community but they headed our words. And no I don't work for blizzard even though this sounds like a promo ... just trying to say they're not all bad.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[CFTM]

Sierra used to do that crap, I remember Space Quest Four had a really obnoxious one. Then I lost the damn thing so I was stuck ...

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[spir0]

I agree with everything you say here whole heartedly, but you also have to understand the other side of the coin. The publishers are fighting against people who think it's their divine right to have anything and everything free.

There are people who I stop lending my music CDs and DVDs to because I know that the first thing they do when they get them home is fire up a ripper. I spent good money on my collections, just to have a mate rip the shit for nothing.

They look at me strange when I recommend buying something.

What do you do when the "customers" think they should get everything free?

The only way in my eye to completely outlaw piracy is to charge less than the blank media. Even with lots of "tangible" goodies thrown in, some people will still copy the games.

Then again, I also believe that piracy helps sell some copies too. Some people I know treat it like "shareware." Pirate a game, play it, and if you like it, then buy it.

I think I could rant on for hours too...

btw - I do like someone else's idea that if you're only licensing a game, the publishers should replace damaged media.... :)

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[spudgun]

I get so sick of
1. having to find the CD to play the game
2. having the CD-ROM die because it's worn out by trying to read bad tracks over and over.
3. Not being trusted by the company that I am a customer of.

Lately I've only been playing ghost recon - because I have a no cd patch installed.

I've given up buying games now..

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

The customer was never right.

Never.

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[rpillala]

Game packages are getting smaller, not larger. Recently I got UFO Aftermath (PC) and it came in a DVD case, which is about as small as you can get.

Really I think the answer is in making us feel like developers deserve the money for giving us such great games. The sad fact is that most publishers are using the promise of value (by securing a lot of hype before release) and these crippling measures to get people to buy their games. When was the last time you saw an unfavorable preview of a game? Now compare with unvaforable reviews.

That or they rely on a licensed property to sell a game. I don't think they problem of piracy is amenable to a purely technological fix.

Ravi

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[WWWWolf]

Yeah, Ultima's trinkets were definitely a good idea of how to make owning the original a cool thing.

It's also a great example of how EA screwed things up later on. I have perfectly legit copies of U1-U8, UUW1 and SE, but none of the budget/collection releases had any of the trinket (and the U1-6 Series CD from Encore was a travesty - no printed manual, extremely crappy electronic manuals, without even the U6 copy protection questions!!!) I wish they'll some day get a clue...

Well, with so many goths around these days, I think I'll one day go to one of their stores and get myself an Ankh =)

Re:Copy Protection Only Hurts Paying Customers

[WWWWolf]

Sounds like the Ultimate Game Collection from Encore Software. Mine had six CDs and one demo CD, I think. Not very ultimate if the only real highlights were the Ultima disc and maybe, just maybe, Spear of Destiny. (One day I'm probably going to spook the bejezus out the youngsters with that Full Motion Video game... *shiver*)

The Ultima docs were really silly, yes - a MS-Write file that had most of the stuff copy-pasted around (some places didn't even have the right game names...) and no copy protection questions.

It was so cool when later I found some web site that had all of the missing documentation, addressed specifically to those who were unfortunate enough to get that thing...

It's all the same

[HRbnjR]

Game producers, music producers, movie producers, anyone distributing digital content, these people all need to realize the same fact:

If you can read it, you can *copy* it.

Period.

It's all just varying levels of difficulty beyond that. If people want it bad enough, it will happen (even of they have to run a wire to each pixel of their DHCPv4 enabled LCD or whatever). Any copy protection to be viable over the long term needs to be based not on media based protections, but on real cryptography. Smart companies know this, hence, Palladium.

Re:It's all the same

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is up with this bait and switch? You just said that if you can read it, you can copy it (correct) and then you start saying that copy protection is viable if it's based on cryptography. NO NO NO NO NO, your original statement was the correct one. If you can read it, you can copy it, even if it is encrypted - you just run a wire to each pixel of your DHCPv4 enabled LCD or whatever.

Re:It's all the same

[cmwck]

Any copy protection to be viable over the long term needs to be based not on media based protections, but on real cryptography.

Even if your game disk was encrypted, you still need to be able to guarantee that you, the original purchaser of the game, are the only one who can decrypt the disk, and I don't see how this can easily be done. Personaly, I've never seen a game disk that couldn't be copied one way or another, and I don't see an unbeatable copy-protection system coming along any time soon.

Old news

[Tuxinatorium]

There is already a 3.5mb shareware program that will copy any and all games. Google Alcohol 120%. CloneCD is crap, i've seen it fail on numerous games, whereas Alcohol 120% never fails to make a perfect copy. I doubt even this overpriced Game X Copy program will even match it. There were better free DVD copying programs around on the internet long before DVD X Copy came out. Google Gordian Knot, by the way.

Re:Old news

[Rick the Red]

Speaking of old news, and admittedly a bit off-topic, but does anyone know where I can find a crack for the original Microsoft Flight Simulator? The one that's Copyright 1982, 1984 Bruce Artwick/Microsoft. Yeah, I know it's old -- I've also got Pro 2002 and the new 2004, so I'm not stuck in the past -- but the original had some interesting, um, flaws which were pointed out in the books 40 Great Flight Simulator Adventures (c) 1985 and 40 More Great Flight Simulator Adventures (c) 1986. I enjoy these enough that I still keep a 5 1/4" drive (as A: no less) just to play this one game. I'd be grateful if I could copy it to my hard drive and be done with the copy protection nonsense. Help? Anyone?

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Try #oldwarez on efnet IRC. Good odds that one of the one or two servebots there will have a copy distilled down to a single .COM; the program itself is probably 128k or less.

Re:Old news

[limekiller4]

Tuxinatorium writes:
"There is already a 3.5mb shareware program that will copy any and all games. Google Alcohol 120%. CloneCD is crap, i've seen it fail on numerous games, whereas Alcohol 120% never fails to make a perfect copy. I doubt even this overpriced Game X Copy program will even match it. There were better free DVD copying programs around on the internet long before DVD X Copy came out. Google Gordian Knot, by the way."

Careful. Much relies on the ability of your CD burner's ability to write subchannel data. AKA "n-sheep burners." Mine being a 2-sheep burner and therefore quite good for pretty much anything.

But not everyone has a burner this good. YMMV.

But yes, I swear by Alcohol 120%.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. A120 can't copy the copy protection on PlayStation games to the point you don't need a modchip.

Re:Old news

[ASkGNet]

n-sheep refers to the burner's ability to correctly write certain problematic EFM codes (EFM = 8 to 14 modulation, the process of decoding the scheme used by the cdrom to save space, just as your harddrive uses a similar scheme to save time/space on writing the data)

The problem is that there are a few EFM patterns that are irregular, as in, they could be interpreted differently in different context. And, the current EFM copy protection relies on mangling some of the codes, introducing 10-to-14 modulation, that can be interpreted in several ways. All of the drives can read 95% of the possible EFM codes. This is a 1-sheep burner The firmware of a regular cd-rw or a regular duplication station is designed to prevent the other 5% from occuring. During copy protection, however, a specifically altered firmware adds the unreadable codes. The software reads each sector with that encoding a few times. If the result is different each time, the disk is deemed legit. However, during copying, a 1-sheep burner will write the 'correct' version of the EFM, causing the effect to disappear.
A large part of the newer CDRW drives is able to read and write ~97% of the possible EFM codes. Those are the 2-sheep burners. However, there are still some EFM combinations that can be read by a few select drive (some Plextors and the latest Liteon cdrw being the main examples). Those are the 3-sheep burners.

Re:Old news

[limekiller4]

Thanks for the reply. I never did quite understand what all that meant.

Can you suggest a specific model of a 3-sheep burner? Do the DVD-burners automagically qualify?

Re:Old news

[ASkGNet]

Most (all?) DVD burners are 2-sheep As for a specific model of a CDRW: http://www.makeabackup.com/modules.php?name=Burner _Attributes&op=index has a classification If I recall correctly, 3 sheep burners are -rare- to -non existent-, and one of them is Lite-on 52x32x52 I could be wrong though, as I myself own a measly 2 sheep burner - an LG 52x32x52

Re:Old news

[limekiller4]

Thanks for the info! I have a 2-sheep as well (Sony CRX220E1). Well, I saw a listing that said it was one, anyway.

Re:Old news

[Tuxinatorium]

My trusty old Lite-On 48x/12x/48x coupled with Alcohol 120% in "General Copy Protected CD" mode has never failed to make a perfectly functional backup, if that's what you mean. It even worked for (long list of "backups" censored). Lite-On CDRW drives are the way to go for breaking any copy protection.

Re:Old news

[Tuxinatorium]

Playstaton games are black on the bottom. It's a whole different kind of media. Of course it won't recognize any CD-R without a bit of hacking.

321 Studios needs to learn their ABCs

[M3wThr33]

Okay, with the MPAA already on their back, they just invited every PC (And some console, I would guess) game publisher to hate them as well. What's next? MUSIC X COPY and KARAOKE X COPY to piss off everyone else?

Re:321 Studios needs to learn their ABCs

[Anonymous Coward]

In business it doesn't matter who hates you - even your customers - as long as your customers buy your products. This isn't a popularity contest.

Re:321 Studios needs to learn their ABCs

[Firehawke]

Music and karaoke CDs should be, barring any music cds with explicit protection, be easily copied using existing cd copy tools. I bet CloneCD would handle most protected discs without a second thought as it is, but you'd really probably want to strip the protection rather than copy it since it's intrusive during playback attempts.

Copying

[skinfitz]

It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.

I suppose it also generates registration numbers and hacks into MMORPG accounts too does it?

Most games are heading towards an online model where the ability to copy the game media is often encouraged.

Also in the news...

[ConceptJunkie]

Copy II PC Stirs Backup Controversy

Posted by ConceptJunkie on 83-05-31 3:51

Thanks to Byte magazine for its article covering the unveiling of a new version of its utility called Copy II PC at this year's Comdex show in Chicago. This commercially-sold floppy disk backup option claims: "You no longer need to fear losing your expensive PC software collection to bad or erased floppy disks... Now you can simply back them up and put the expensive original in a safe place, and the backup will work on your PC just like the original." The maker of this soon-to-launch utility, Central Point Software, has faced lawsuits previously regarding its Copy II PC software, and a prominently marketed, software backup product is sure to cause sparks - the Byte article writer comments: "No matter how much Central Point claims that users with the most honorable intentions are its target market, it's easy to see where it would be the perfect item for unscrupulous people to copy software to give to or trade with their friends. It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against."


We see how much illegal copying has devastated the software industry so far. No one could ever make a hundred-million-dollar company in such a crook-friendly climate. Besides, selling replacements discs is a legitimate means of revenue for companies. I had to pay $5 for a replacement copy of Autoduel for my Amiga. It's my fault the floppy was damaged.

Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose.

Re:Also in the news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose.

Geddy ROCKS!! Free Alex!! He was framed even though he's a stupid drunk!

Re:Also in the news...

[Aliencow]

Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose.

If you wanna quote French, at least do it properly. That wasn't even close to making sense.

Re:Also in the news...

[ConceptJunkie]

So I made a typographical error on /.

Wow, you've really done the world a service by pointing this out.

I hope someone mods you up to reflect the significance of your accomplishment.

you almost had it.

[*weasel]

you started right.

If the content is meant to be read, it will be copied, regardless of the scheme used. the instructions for what the protection scheme is looking for to determine authenticity of the media are right in the executable. you've handed the map to your stash right to the treasure hunters - it's all a matter of time.

the only situation that can get you around this, and even then it's largely temporary, is if the software has to be 'enabled' by a central authority to operate each time. Eg. CD Key schemes for online games.

however, for most software/media content it is not at all feasible to ask your customer to be online every time they want to use your product.

and in reality, the code used on the client to request and verify the 'activation' is once again, right there on the client system. the untrusted system. at the heart, every software protection scheme can be circumvented with a single altered jump statement.

the -best- you can do is to isolate 'pirated' copies of your product from the rest of your online community. and at the same time, you've spent millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours on a situation that isn't even proven to 'protect' sales.

'lost' sales to piracy is a vague amount that is touted by software protection vendors - but no-one has ever shown (via scientific study) that using a product like SafeDisc will net you more sales than if you hadn't used it. on top of that, no-one has studied whether any such possible increase in revenue could even cover the cost of implementing and supporting the copy protection scheme in the first place.

'palladium' is based on the idea that the client can be a trusted member of a conversation, but frankly, that isn't a very safe assumption in any situation where the client doesn't have to participate in the conversation to be useful.

as long as it's technically possible to run a self-signed application (think anyone with a development certificate), the client will be hacked. that all code must be signed may keep the binary from being anonymously distributed, but it can not and will not prohibit the data and source patch from being distributed.

all palladium allows is, once again, the ability to cordon off 'pirated' copies of your software from the rest of your online community. if it's useful as standalone software - it just won't help.

What are people complaining about?

[TheLink]

The target market for this software is more likely to put it to legitimate uses.

Coz the others won't buy Games X Copy, they'd copy it instead, or just use other CD/DVD copying software. Doh.

regsub

[violent.ed]

No matter how much 321 Studios claims that parents with the most honorable intentions are its target market, it's easy to see where it would be the perfect item for unscrupulous gamers to copy software to give to or trade with their friends. It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against."

No matter how much Smith & Wesson claims that parents with the most honorable intentions are its target market, it's easy to see where it would be the perfect item for unscrupulous gangsters to rob people or kill with their friends. It goes against everything the NRA has been fighting against."

cut and paste and see how silly it is

[bigbigbison]

No matter how much Louisville Slugger claims that athletes with the most honorable intentions are its target market, it's easy to see where it would be the perfect item for unscrupulous individuals to hit people or break car windows. It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.

Buy vs Pirate.

[JavaLord]

The funny part about this is, buying a game is a much worse deal then pirating one. Ok, say I want to buy Unreal Tournament 2004. I have to wait for it to come out, go to the store, hope they have a copy, bring it home, install it, put in a serial number, hope the serial is right, then play. Any time I want to play after that, I have to make sure the CD is in the drive, and if I lose the original I am fuxored. Plus if the game sucks, I've lost $50

Now say I pirate the game, I have no waiting in line, no CD to worry about, if I lose the thing I can always re-burn it, I can make unlimited backups of it, and I don't have to worry about a serial most of the time. If the game sucks, I just lost 50 cents.

Why is it harder for the buyer than the pirate to play a game? Copy protection only stops the lowest common denominator of people who are too brainless to find a crack. Meanwhile consumers who support these game companies get punished by the silly copy protection schemes.

Re:Buy vs Pirate.

[Anonymous Coward]

you wouldn't be able to play it online without a legit cd-key. The keygens released by the warez groups are usually only good for installation. They don't give you valid keys that work online.

Here Here!

[cgenman]

I purchased a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003 on clearance from Target. The thing was, it lacked a valid registration code. It must have fallen out of the box. After a few minutes googling around, a CD keygen that worked was found and I was off.

Except that I wasn't. The server wouldn't accept the key for multiplayer. After hours of searching, no key, keygen, or crack online could be found that would allow my machine to communicate with Epic's servers. I was very effectively locked out.

I'm not saying this because I'm bitter: $5 for the single player experience was definitely worth it. I'm saying this because server-side authentication is a far better method of handling copy protection than safedisk. While companies invest large sums of money into having a crack arrive two weeks after a release instead of just one, server-side authentication is generally never broken.

Standard media can be copied. Accounts cannot.

Re:Here Here!

[moonbender]

Cracked servers to the rescue.

But I agree, central CD-key protection is both fairly easy to set up, fairly consumer friendly and the only vaguely effective copy protection. Of course it only works for multiplayer online games. It does that fairly well, though: although pirates can play the game, their community must be split from the "legal" community which plays on authenticating servers.

They'll find a way

[UsedToCould]

I am all for a product that will help me backup my games. I have a couple that I can't replace if I wanted to(they're close to 6 years old and unavailable anymore). Regardless, those who will use this or any other product for pirating games will find another way if this one is not made available. You have to figure that if they really want to steal it, they'll find a way.

At least...

[superultra]

At least the game publishers don't have to worry about Games X Copy actually selling. Most will just pirate it.

Why is this News??

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone earlier posted, there are already a plethora of commercial game-copying programs available out there.

I for one use 'Game Drive' from FarStone, very handy for playing games on my laptop w/o having to cart around a pile of CDs.

So tell me again, why is this news?

Seems like Slashdot just put up a bunch of free press for 321 Studios is all.

Re:Why is this News??

[elrick_the_brave]

It's news because it is still relevant and that's how things get done in this world.. rehashed until someone takes charge and changes things.. or gets relgated to the 'pile'. Slashdot is an excellent represenatation of the North American social structure and state. Very financially based and the only way something gets look at is if it's brought to the front, sabres are rattled, and cost to a business are shown.

Re:Why is this News??

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in North America, and I can say that over here the way it works is this:

When a new product enters an already crowded market, unless it actually does something new, or is demonstrably better than existing products, it is rarely considered news.

Moreover, what are you talking about?
What is going to 'get done in this world' thanks to this useless post?
What is it bringing 'to the front'?
Who is taking charge and changing things?
And what the heck is anybody rattling sabres about?

CD protection

[elrick_the_brave]

While I support the games industry.. because without the money.. there wouldn't be one. I hate the fact I need to have a SLOW CD in a drive waiting for a machine to recognize it and boot up the game. I recently broke my Empires CD while on vacation. I ended spending fully 50% of the cost of the game to replace it because I had to send to the United States from Canada. This sucks. On top of that, due to moves and my lack of diligence I've lost two games either because of jewel cases going missing or one of the CDs because I only use one to play. Industry does not make it easy to retrieve my CD key electronically (except a few) when I register.

When I register.. I fully expect them to back me up.. not charge me the cost of another game or replacement. When an industry fully expects users to take the brunt of their inability to inovate.. I hate it. But it is the state of affairs so I have to live with it.

I am frustrated.. but it's what I choose to have fun with.

Re:CD protection

[snkline]

Industry does not make it easy to retrieve my CD key electronically (except a few) when I register.

This is actually what I'm grateful to Bioware for. I lost my instruction book, which had the key in it, and thought I was screwed. So I went to Bioware's site to see how I could get a new one, and low and behold, the thing was stored in my registration data.

This is something all companies should do. Microsoft wanted me to pay $10 to get a new key for VC++ 6. Now that isn't alot, but come on, it doesn't cost them even a fraction of a percent of that to just give me a new code. I can understand charging something to replace media, but for a software generated cd-key it is ludicrous!

Fine, get rid of the backup software

[argStyopa]

I'll support the industry in their efforts against this copying software, as long as they start using scratch-resistant lacquers on their cd/dvd surfaces, and/or promise to replace my original purchase disks for postage costs when they become so scratched they don't work anymore.

As long as they are going to assume I'm a pirate, and I *have* to stick the cd in the drive for my game to play, then I'd like them to cover the replacement of legitimately-purchased cd's damaged due to normal wear & tear. (If you have kids that use the computer, you know that those are usually the first ones to fail...)

I have at least 30 game cd's (out of maybe 300) that won't work anymore due to scratching, and the 'cd resurfacers' don't work as well as they claim. If I was smart, I guess I'd just pirate the games off Kazaa, but I don't want to do that. :(

Re:Fine, get rid of the backup software

[Squidgee]

I agree. My WC3 dic is broken (dogs). My StarCraft disc went to god-knows-where. And while I've got CD-keys for both, I can't play since I don't have the discs.

And I'll be damned if I pay for them again.

1.4.7 works with SD2

[Anonymous Coward]

1.4.7 (1005) is happily hosting the safedisc 2 protected BF1942 secret weapons of ww2. The previous version punked out. Alcohol is the best CD emulater I've used.

God Forbid...

[InfinityWpi]

God forbid I give a friend a copy of my game. He might even install it on his computer! He might spend an hour downloading the patch that fixes the bugs! And then he might get so frustrated by the fact he still needs a CD key, a codeword from a random page in the manual, a parallel-port dongle, and a fingerprint verification in order to start the damn game!

They'll never learn ...

[jc42]

Way back in the 90's, the makers of lots of commercial and business software did the same sort of thing. They had "NO COPYING ALLOWED" clauses in the license. They had anti-copy gimmicks in the files.

The reaction of many businesses was "We back up our disks periodically. If a license doesn't permit copying, it will not be installed on any company computers. End of discussion." Lots of companies rigorously enforced this, on the advice of their lawyers.

After a while, the software makers caught on, and now most of them allow backup copies. Even the tech-challenged dummies in the US Congress caught on, and they passed a law that explicitly permits backup copies of software.

Most personal/home computers aren't backed up, for various reasons. The biggest is probably that historically backups have been done mostly to tapes, and a tape drive as big as your disk has either been not available at all, or if it's available, it costs more than the computer. But this is changing. Backup to DVD is now not only possible, but cheap, and a R/W DVD drive isn't that much more expensive than a read-only drive. Backup over the Net is becoming easier, and there are companies around who will do it for you cheaply. Or you can get a 200-MB USB disk drive for not too unreasonable a price.

So people are going to start backing up their own stuff. It's already happening with people who have gigabytes of digital photos that they don't want to lose. Many people have their personal financial records on their computer, and are backing those up (for when they get audited 8 or 10 years from now ;-). And while you're doing that, why not just back up the whole disk? The DVD will hold it all.

A "no copying" clause in any commercial product is rapidly becoming a block to retail sales, just as it did in the business environment. I don't want to become a criminal just because I have the sense to back up my disk. One by one, every other computer owner on the planet is going to realize the same thing.

So I'm going to be looking for such clauses, and if I see them, I'll likely decide to wait until I can find something equivalent that I can back up.

Or maybe I'll just get a "pirate" copy. If I'm going to be labelled a criminal, I suppose I might as well be one.

They're shooting themselves in the foot. Nothing new there, I guess.

To get a "perfect" copy, you need cdrdao.

[Ayanami Rei]

For example... copy a disc

Using dd or standard inferfaces will only get you the standard data session, error corrected. You need to use this lower level tool to get at the more esoteric features, or to make a working copy if the system uses copy protection.

Host on sourceforge

[gmhowell]

Seeing as how OSDN is happy to host various hacker tools on sourceforge, why don't some of these 'illegal' utilities open the source and host there? Clearly the people who run sourceforge have no morals. Heck, at least Games X Copy has some redeeming value.

In Todays World Product Makes No Sense

[Bruha]

Yes 5 years ago this would of been nice with all the games that required to have the CD inserted to play but nowdays that's just not the case anymore. Most games nowdays install completely to your hard drive and then you just stuff it back in the box and put it on a bookshelf.

On the flipside it is also much harder to just copy a game and give it to a friend. With keys and internet play and phone home features those who share their keys risk getting their keys disabled.

Re:In Todays World Product Makes No Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

What games are you playing? With the rare expection of a game or two even with a full install of several gigabytes you still need the CD inserted into your CD-ROM to play.

The major game genre that doesn't require this are MMORPGs to due them requiring a key, and the monthly charge to the subscribers. If your making $10-$15/month off 1,000,000 or more people, why worry about them having the disk in their drive?

While I don't like it, I still buy games. The one thing I do though is immediately download a No-CD crack off the internet so I don't have to deal with constantly inserting the disk. The only time you'll run into problems is if you want to play some of those games online. But with Blizzards games you need a cd-key to access battle.net, yet you must also have the CD inserted. I don't see the point of that.

Re:In Todays World Product Makes No Sense

[mabhatter654]

Really this is a problem! I mean they waste upto 1.5 Gigabytes of disk space and still require the CD, that's stupid. If they're going to require the CD, make a game that doesn't need patched so often and then run from the CD like a console...PC CD-roms are faster, and have more memory to use than consoles and a HDD for swaping...why do we need to install to our HDD. Or if they don't like that argument, install to the HDD, get the authorization by 1-800 # or internet and get it over with.

That said, I've taken to using Farstone's GameDrive for all my CD Rom games the only drawback is space, but even then it's probably still cheaper to burn the space than spend the time swapping disks. They probably have some copy protection involved to keep from swapping images, but I wouldn't know about that.

Warez is easy to find.

[Pluvius]

Just check eDonkey or BitTorrent. And it doesn't matter whether you get a pirated game online or from a friend, it's still going to require a crack unless the method you used to rip the CD image supports the copy protection (e.g. CloneCD).

Rob

Re:Warez is easy to find.

[Goldberg's Pants]

Alcohol 120% is another option. I have a couple of games backed up using that. Very good little program.

Title 17, Section 117 - Computer Programs

[Unordained]

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/117.html

Oh, look. Sorry, the right to make a backup of software is actually spelled out separately from fair use, which, I'll agree, is rather vague (though we do have case law to work on.)

In the end, all laws and infringements thereof are tested in court. Murder may be illegal, but you still go through a trial to determine if what happened fell under the existing laws -- what's your point? That you should fear to step out your door because something you say or do might later (in court) be determined to be illegal under some law you didn't understand?

Again, the right to make a backup of your software is explicitly given to you in our laws.

Regardless of the availability of lawyers who, like masters of other professions, should know best, you're still responsible for knowing the laws of the land yourself and taking responsibility or consequences (on either side) for the infringement of laws. Your lawyer can't replace you, and his knowledge can't replace yours. It's everyone's duty to know 'diddly.' (If, in fact, 'knowing diddly' is the opposite of 'not knowing diddly.')

This will not be popular...

[Qrlx]

Nobody ever calls the publisher of a book and says "My book got damaged from normal wear and tear, can you send me a new one?" Obviuosly, you just go buy a new book; you should have taken care of the one you paid for in the first place.

Why should this be different for a CD? I was reinstaling Vice City (known to be a real bitch to copy; I think it requires some sort of emulation to make a working backup) and my roommate had left the CD sitting in a big pile of other CDs, cat hair, and random credit card receipts from the bar. Obviously it wasn't in the best shape. But is that the game company's fault?

Look, having to put the CD in fuck all annoying, and I have either a NoCD or a daemon image to circumvent the physical CD requirement for every game I play, but I don't see what the big problem is. If your copy of "Finding Nemo's Buttplug" DVD gets smeared with peanut butter and the dog plays fetch with it, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO BUY A NEW ONE. Why should Disney sell you a new one, at reduced cost, just because you have taken the concept of living in a disposable society to heart?

I'm sorry but I don't think software publishers are behaving unreasonably. Now, are these protection mechanisms effective? Hell no. Are game pusblishers wasting their time, and mine? Yes. But the fact remains that if you take care of the CD, the game will last. Far better than a game on floppy disks would last, esp. the early Ultima games where you had to pop the floppy out of the drive AS SOON AS you died or your character died, permanently.

What do you do when, fifteen years down the road, you can't read the CD anymore because of physical degredation of the media?

What do you do when, fifty years from now, you can't read your paperbacks for the same reason?

Personally I hope librarians are working on a solution, because frankly it's in the industry's interests to have you re-purchase everything you've already bought.

Re:This will not be popular...

[mabhatter654]

But the software industry has said YOU don't own the software, the CD is just a delivery tool, not what you paid for. Actually I've sent in several CDs for replacement at only a fraction of the original cost and it worked out great.

conniving bitch

[Anonymous Coward]

This woman is a conniving bitch.

Why doesn't the industry...

[cymen]

Why doesn't the gaming industry put it's money where it's mouth is: give absolutely free exchanges of good discs for damaged discs. At a maximum, a shipping fee would be paid. The burden of supporting the rest of the activity would be placed on the manufacturers. A 3rd party exchanger, authorized to provide replacement discs at anytime for at least a decade, would also be a workable solution.

You want to fight piracy? You don't want devices like this? Well make it so they aren't needed.

Copying

[101percent]

I think the real ethical question is whether or not you can use this software to make a copy of itself or make a copy of DVD X copy.

Nobody mentioned the hardware?

[TubeSteak]

If your drive can't properly copy the errors or write them back to a cd, this whole argument is moot. Lots of families still have old computers lying around with old cd writers that can't copy things like Safe Disc 2.xx. Oh well, maybe they'll get a refund.

I want this product...

[ndnet]

...because I have three younger brothers who just got a new computer and want to play all of 'Shawnee's games. Now, do I want to hand them my original FF VII PC CDs? How about Diablo 2? Or perhaps one of the nice games I bought myself for Christmas? I don't want to play them... I'll just let them leave it on the stand, then on the floor, then in spilled soda, etc...

Maybe, just maybe, this isn't a bad idea in and of itself, and we just need an implementation with disc authentication (ie, disc is encrypted, DRM file on family PC can unlock it).

No, wait... it's just an evil company whose sole purpose is to make the impossible possible: now, every pirate in the world has a tool that can duplicate CDs. Oh, wait, they had CloneCD. And CDRWin/Fireburner. And approximately 1.2 Gazillion other cd burning tools....