101–110 of 259 posts
Related story, I remember years ago as a kid I bought a Prince of Persia PC game at a yardsale (on a CD), but early on in the game there was a riddle where you needed a password to get through this door, it was some cryptic message of a few numbers. I don't remember the exact format but it turned out the riddle was instructing me to go to page X, line Y and character Z of the manual for the game! I remember being so…
There's a big list on mobygames here: https://www.mobygames.com/group/9360/games-with-manual-looku...
Related story, I remember years ago as a kid I bought a Prince of Persia PC game at a yardsale (on a CD), but early on in the game there was a riddle where you needed a password to get through this door, it was some cryptic message of a few numbers. I don't remember the exact format but it turned out the riddle was instructing me to go to page X, line Y and character Z of the manual for the game! I remember being so…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are not shipping the crack. They are shipping their own binary that has been modified by the crack.
Those modifications have a copy-right they do not own...
I guess the economics just haven't worked out to produce a true showdown. Game mods are in my opinion the clear favorite for where this would finally rise to a court-level problem, and clearly there's been a lot of conflict in this space, but nobody yet has been foolhardy enough to build a large enough business on selling some mod that when the owner tries to shut them down they actually go to a full-on, precedent-setting legal battle. (After all, economically, when you get to that level of capability, why not make your own game that you clearly own? That path has been trod many times.)
So, my best answer to your question is, honestly nobody really knows what kind of rights Razor may or may not have to the final product of their crack, especially since it is not the crack itself being distributed.
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A No-CD crack might not be transformative enough to warrant copyright protection as derivative work in the US. But they could sue in a jurisdiction that is more likely to give them a favorable outcome. Handling of derivative works and the minimum threshold for copyright varies considerably between countries.
I don't think people on HN understand what a derivative work is, considering how often I see it referenced incorrectly. You can't make a derivative work without a license. That's why it's derivative. It derivates from the copyrighted work and is therefore within the domain of the copyright and under the control of the copyright's owner. A Harry Potter spin-off about Hermione (I don't know anything about HP, sorry in…
This is actually an unanswered/unproven question that comes up quite a bit in automotive tuning, where individuals and tuning companies modify OEM calibrations and create application software patches which, while they are unique and perform stand-alone functions, run on top of OEM ECU software.
Related story, I remember years ago as a kid I bought a Prince of Persia PC game at a yardsale (on a CD), but early on in the game there was a riddle where you needed a password to get through this door, it was some cryptic message of a few numbers. I don't remember the exact format but it turned out the riddle was instructing me to go to page X, line Y and character Z of the manual for the game! I remember being so…
Related story, I remember years ago as a kid I bought a Prince of Persia PC game at a yardsale (on a CD), but early on in the game there was a riddle where you needed a password to get through this door, it was some cryptic message of a few numbers. I don't remember the exact format but it turned out the riddle was instructing me to go to page X, line Y and character Z of the manual for the game! I remember being so…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
pirating software (movies, and music) is a term from the 90's by the MPAA, Riaa, and Games industry in attempting to link the act of simple copyright infringement, a civil non-criminal violation of the law to violent robbery on the high seas... Cracking is a method of removing undesired features or inclusions from software, often licensing controls, or other anti-consumer features. Many many many people "cracked" the…
That was the scariest term they could come up with? The romantic swashbuckling seafarer, antagonising empires and declaring his own rules? Surely they could have done better. 'software fraud', 'software theft', 'forgery'... hmm well there's a reason I don't work in marketing obviously.
Do you not remember the ads? The "you wouldn't steal a car"?
Piracy is just what they were able to get. Should have hired the bank's PR managers, who turned "failing to do due diligence on a customer's identity" into the customer's problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
pirating software (movies, and music) is a term from the 90's by the MPAA, Riaa, and Games industry in attempting to link the act of simple copyright infringement, a civil non-criminal violation of the law to violent robbery on the high seas... Cracking is a method of removing undesired features or inclusions from software, often licensing controls, or other anti-consumer features. Many many many people "cracked" the…
> Many many many people "cracked" their software who where not eganged in the act of copyright infringement, they legally owned the software but for a number of reasons has no desire to run the invasive software bundled with the game or content they purchased. Yes, many people. But not “many many many” people. You try to make it sound like cracking to pirate was minority use case. It was a valid use case, sure, but a…
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You need to either be or represent the copyright holder. I'm 99% sure most warez groups have no interest in exposing themselves to any legal systems when it comes to what they do.
If I say I represent such a group, then; is it likely that anyone will disagree? DMCA cases seem to be about who has the scarier looking letterhead anyway. To whom would I have to prove or disprove my standing to take Rockstar games down, I wonder? Does Steam have any right to refuse such a request just because it's patently absurd?
This is only true of Youtube, where their "DMCA" process is entirely extralegal, which is why there is no penalty for an incorrect takedown request.
If you file a DMCA, and Valve ignores it, you have to take it to court, where a judge will decide whether you prove you are the rightful copyright holder. As in the case with google, a company is free to take down content for any reason, including for bogus DMCA claims.