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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."
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.
See you, space cowboy...
It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.
So it's supports whatever the industry is fighting for?
Nice to see that these are the types of intellectual giants we're up against.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"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
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? :)
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
"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.
.evom ton seod gis eht
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.
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.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
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.
... 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.
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.
Repeal the DMCA!
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.
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.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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.
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."
- You're not paranoid, they really are after you.
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.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
At least the game publishers don't have to worry about Games X Copy actually selling. Most will just pirate it.
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.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
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.
-Styopa
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.
;-). And while you're doing that, why not just back up the whole disk? The DVD will hold it all.
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
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
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.')
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.