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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."
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...
It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against.
So it's supports whatever the industry is fighting for?
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.
Anyone with kids will want to copy their own games. Kids destroy EVERYTHING.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
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.
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.
There are two types of people: those prepared for the zombie apocalypse and those who will be eaten.
At least the game publishers don't have to worry about Games X Copy actually selling. Most will just pirate it.
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.
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.
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!
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.