Legal no-CD patches

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by snoopy369
No restriction has been made. As I said before, you have a right to make a backup copy, but the software maker has no obligation to make that possible or easy. That would be an absurdly broad interpretation of that law, and certainly not one that has been made to date.

I disagree. If you have a right to do a certain thing, and somebody prevents you from doing so without any legal grounds, he's violating the law that grants you that right.

Originally posted by snoopy369
Particularly note the language ... "It is not an infringement..." That indicates that the intent of the law is that this is an exception to the rights of the copyright holder, not an extension of the rights of the copier.

The copyright law is a restriction of what people can do - it grants a temporary exclusive right to the copyright holder by forbidding others to copy, sell, distribute, etc. the item in question. It does not give the holder extra rights over and on top of others.

[snoopy369]

Too late, Spike.

UR, look at the law again, and please understand that your usage of the word "right" is quite out of line.

it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy

Does that say "you have the right to xxxxx"? No. It says, "If you do this, you can't be sued." Period. It does not say, "You have the legal right to be able to make a backup copy," or even "you have the legal right to make a backup copy," which would not likely support your argument anyway.

It says, if you are able to make a backup copy, then you may. That's all it says. Anything else is reading way too much into it.

As I said above, this is an exception to the rights of the copyright holder; not a granting of a new right to anyone. Copyright law is made to uphold the rights of the creator of a media, not to limit others' rights, notwithstanding the necessary limitation of rights that comes via the protection of aforementioned rights. That intent is shown quite clearly by the language above - "not an infringement [on the rights of the copyrightholder]" as opposed to "is a right of the user". Words in laws such as this are carefully chosen for a purpose - to show which side the burden of proof resides in disputes. In copyright cases, the burden of proof lies:
1) on the copyright holder, to show they have a valid copyright
2) on the copyright holder, to show an infringement has occurred on this right by the user

and then
3) on the user to show that his/her use falls under one of the valid exceptions to copyright law [such as the one you quoted here], if and when 1) and 2) are proven. Hence the wording of this exception.

[snoopy369]

On a side, and probably more topical, nature, I wonder what the legality of creating a fake CD drive on your harddrive (oldschool: mapping the CD drive letter to a path on c:; this generally doesn't work anymore [in windows], but there are ways to manage it) and copying the CD image to that? That isn't modifying the executable or data in any way, but just "tricking" it. It's not in and of itself an intent-of-the-law violation, I'd say, assuming you don't distribute it, but does it violate the letter of the law, I wonder?

[DaShi]

UR makes up his own definitions. It's our responsibility to figure them out.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by DaShi
UR makes up his own definitions. It's our responsibility to figure them out.

And it's not always easy.