Lame NoCD Cracks !

[Joe Forster/STA]

Hey DABhand,

Apparently, you need to learn a bit more about this topic - docs are lying around the Net...! Game publishers say they want to disallow "casual pirates" from copying original CD's/DVD's by introducing copy protection.

However, exactly "casual pirates" are the ones who are having major problems with the sophisticated and, as Starforce's example shows, sometimes very incompatible copy protections. Also, "mass CD/DVD duplicators", complete factories manufacturing pirated copies of CD's/DVD's in some countries, are not affected as they have enough money for their own means of defeating, circumventing or duplicating the copy protection.

Conclusion: With copy protection, trying to make the honest customer stay honest is similar to trying to make the tall customer not get shorter. (A not letter-by-letter quote from a conference about the pointlessness of DRM.)

[Edit] Damn, I forgot to mention that "casual pirates" are the usual people who might be asked to copy their original games for the neighbor, without knowing they break the law by doing that...

Joe

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

Hey DABhand,

Apparently, you need to learn a bit more about this topic - docs are lying around the Net...! Game publishers say they want to disallow "casual pirates" from copying original CD's/DVD's by introducing copy protection.

However, exactly "casual pirates" are the ones who are having major problems with the sophisticated and, as Starforce's example shows, sometimes very incompatible copy protections. Also, "mass CD/DVD duplicators", complete factories manufacturing pirated copies of CD's/DVD's in some countries, are not affected as they have enough money for their own means of defeating, circumventing or duplicating the copy protection.

Conclusion: With copy protection, trying to make the honest customer stay honest is similar to trying to make the tall customer not get shorter. (A not letter-by-letter quote from a conference about the pointlessness of DRM.)

Joe

Im not sure as to what your argument is refering to in my posts. But yes I agree there is hardware that will replicate a hard-pressed master many times, you can get raid towers for home PC's that can do the same job.

They may have money, but that doesnt mean they have the means to defeat any protection.

Some protections like the PSX and PS2 games have their protection on the outer tracks of a disc, impossible for burners to burn there, but as said before if they have a master then it can be done on large scale machinery that spit out discs in seconds.

DRM as you pointed out will be the next step, and it is a bad one I agree on that, but at the same time publishers/developers have to protect their media, just like you protect your car with an alarm or a keycode lock. Again as I said its a business, and its about making money.

Sure it costs little to replicate discs and packaging, but when people are turning to piracy as a means, they businesses use this as an excuse to pump up prices and to in turn use whacky protections.

Its a Catch22 situation that will never go away, until perhaps the Cell CPU appears which promises to make protections go a step further.