Legality of cracking a game you already have

[Curious Pineapple]

35 minutes ago, Kisai said:

This is where the concept of modding and the concept of illegality meet.

 

Minecraft, is one of those games.

 

Modding a game without the developer's consent, falls under copyright infringement, IF, you redistribute it. Likewise, cracking the copy protection on a game you own, fine if it's on your own machine, but piracy if you redistribute it.

 

And thus the problem with even going down that rabbit hole. Historically, at least until CD-ROM came along, there was a necessity to need to make backup copies of floppy disks and magnetic media (eg tapes.) So there were lots of programs out there that just straight up stripped the copy protection from disk-based games, and the developers could do absolutely nothing about it, as once the software was sold, it fell under first sale doctrine. Someone could absolutely buy a game, strip the copy protection and resell it. Even if the software licence said otherwise, which is why you are required to destroy any backups or installations of said software if you sell/give-away/donate the software so you no longer have the physical disc.

 

That of course changed with CD-ROM and later digital downloads. With CD-ROM software, the protection mechanism was typically "disc must be in the drive at all times" which seems reasonable, but the protection mechanisms were often flakey (eg The original Diablo game, a copy of the disc would work on Win95, but not Win98, leading people to believe the problem was the game, not that the pirates were pretending they bought the game and upgraded to Win98.) Another example of this are games that had DRM tied to protection mechanisms that only work on Win9x and not Windows 2000/XP. So the necessity to crack a game that isn't played online comes up a lot, legitimately since now a lot of computers don't even come with any optical drive.

 

So what do you do when the game you want to play was a licensed game (such as the Scott Pilgrim vs the World game) and never existed in any physical form and the console is no longer available? Well the legal option is to keep looking for Xbox 360's or PS3's that have it on eBay, but the more practical answer is wait for an emulator for the PS3/Xbox 360 that would allow you to plug in the PS3/Xbox 360 hard drive. 

 

So coming back to the OP question, can you/should you? Probably not, but if it's in the realm of preservation yes. 

 

But in general, if you have to break the protection on a game to install mods, you better not be playing it online. It's one thing to play and wreck your own game, but it's another to wreck it for others. Which is why mods for MMO game clients always do more damage than good.

 

If you cancel your subscription to a game service, you are no longer entitled to play the game. Period.

 

It's a multiplayer mod for Subnautica, it's a single player offline only game. The mod patches the running game in memory and injects the actions of other players (and also causes huge duplication issues). It's not possible to give the mod launcher an executable to point to as it's locked away in the WindowsApps folder and protected by trustedinstaller. I don't think it's a good idea to be trying to patch protected store apps in memory either.

[Guest willies leg]

5 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Legality depends on where you live. Morality-wise i would be fine with that solution. Though I would rather take GOG route as then you get compatibility attached.

 

 

I don't think that would be legally binding. As you are making one-sided agreement. The other party doesn't have chance to agree or disagree before contract is made. Your lawyer wouldn't have fun with that case. (I also doubt you find place where its legal to make agreement where there's no chance to disagree).

 

Actually they do have a chance to disagree. They can choose to not store my stuff.

Same as they force me to use their stuff. If I don't like it I just delete it.

[Curious Pineapple]

2 minutes ago, willies leg said:

Actually they do have a chance to disagree. They can choose to not store my stuff.

Same as they force me to use their stuff. If I don't like it I just delete it.

"Start by saying "By opening, storing, transmitting or deleting this EULA you are accepting all terms set forth below:" "

 

Can't read it without opening, "not storing your stuff" is deleting.

[Curious Pineapple]

This has reminded me of a case in the UK where MBNA (I think it was) used to send "pre approved applications" with an agreement to sign. One bloke scanned the credit agreement, ammended the repayment terms to zero monthly repayments with zero interest, signed it and returned it. He maxed the card out and didn't make payments. It went to court and it was ruled in his favour as he had returned an amended agreement for consideration which the provider accepted by opening an account and sending a credit card.

 

Bit unrelated but I guess someone may find it amusing

[NineEyeRon]

On 5/6/2020 at 6:11 PM, SnowWolf370 said:

You do not OWN any games you purchase over Steam or any other service, you are however renting them.

I hope there are no late fees for CounterStrike:Source, 13 years is a long time.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

No idea, but i literally can't play AC 1 as it asks for you to install the DVD to play and stutters every 10 seconds. same goes for GTA 4 DVD which asks windows live and that thing is dead. 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

This has reminded me of a case in the UK where MBNA (I think it was) used to send "pre approved applications" with an agreement to sign. One bloke scanned the credit agreement, ammended the repayment terms to zero monthly repayments with zero interest, signed it and returned it. He maxed the card out and didn't make payments. It went to court and it was ruled in his favour as he had returned an amended agreement for consideration which the provider accepted by opening an account and sending a credit card.

 

Bit unrelated but I guess someone may find it amusing

 

That's the problem with EULA's, is that they are effectively meaningless. Try this, go to any website that vomits up a "terms of service popup", inspect it with the web browser, and delete the text before clicking ok. There is no guarantee that the user has read it, they just click it to make it go away. Without some kind of personal information attachment, the EULA/ToS is not even enforceable. Hence many piracy paths often involve doing just that, downloading such click-wrapped software and hacking out the EULA/installer. So you never see the EULA presented, and some of the more aggressive piracy behavior is to not only hack out EULA's but to put their own credits into it, and watermark images in case script kiddies decide to repackage it and claim they cracked it on their own. No honor among thieves.

 

It's rather trivial in the long run to break the protection on software, because in most cases, short of a compressed and encrypted executable, you break the protection on software by either no-op'ing out the function that actually runs the protection, or you JMP past it. This is why "signed" binaries are such a thing, as it keeps the OS from running tampered things, but if you know YOU tampered with it, you're just going to run it anyway. Compressed/encryped binaries are a little more involved, typically pulling the decrypted/decompressed binary out of the system memory and dumping it out to disk and fixing a few pointers. This is also how most "click-wrap" stuff is unwrapped as well, and why you never see trial software that can be unlocked into full software anymore. Any off-the-shelf protection software is going to be easier to defeat than a home-brewed-but-less-complex protection. So Steam is a big thing, and you know how pirates pirate steam games? They emulate the steam client. I'm quite frankly surprised that the pirates haven't gone one further and just made their own piratesteam in the same vein that Kodi became video pirates VOD of choice.

 

Windows is not a games console. You can arbitrarily read, write or hook into any program, at any time, and that's why piracy and malware is still a thing at all.

[mr moose]

On 5/7/2020 at 3:11 AM, SnowWolf370 said:

You do not OWN any games you purchase over Steam or any other service, you are however renting them.

 

What you are suggesting is reverse engineering and that is in violation of the terms of service and use you agreed to when you bought the games, and its illegal.

Depends on country, here in Australia you own every game in your steam library as a product for the purposes of consumer law.  They cannot render that game unplayable nor remove it from your library.    You have specifically bought the right to hold and use the software as it is intended.   It can be argued that if I buy a game on CD/dvd and that dvd fouls, I can download a version because I have already paid for the product license to use said product.  

[it_dont_work]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

 It can be argued that if I buy a game on CD/dvd and that dvd fouls, I can download a version because I have already paid for the product license to use said product.  

This has definite precedent in common law in victoria, although I cant think of any newer than the mid 2000's 

[Curious Pineapple]

Ended up a failed experiment. The idea was to get it working, dish it out to a few people (who already have the game on GamePass anyway) and we'd try the multiplayer. If it was good then we'd all buy the game outright to have a proper copy of it. Even after patching out the copy detection (really easy when it's open source and written in C#), it still wouldnt run. I guess the game version was too out of date for the patcher to do it's job.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

Depends on country, here in Australia you own every game in your steam library as a product for the purposes of consumer law.  They cannot render that game unplayable nor remove it from your library.    You have specifically bought the right to hold and use the software as it is intended.   It can be argued that if I buy a game on CD/dvd and that dvd fouls, I can download a version because I have already paid for the product license to use said product.  

Australia is very permissive of being allowed to keep backups of software you own. You still however are not permitted to keep those backups if you simply choose to not pay for access to them.

 

This is what's referred to as format-shifting, and you can generally do this in most countries that have imposed any kind of levy on recording media.

 

With software it gets muddy, as you can only format shift the software (eg the game/application binary), not the assets. Yes, in Australia.

 

And that's another one of those gotcha's with software. If the software was only released as a EXE installer (such as a digital download, or from steam) and is never unpacked into a billion files, you may still be able to make that claim. 

[mr moose]

15 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Australia is very permissive of being allowed to keep backups of software you own. You still however are not permitted to keep those backups if you simply choose to not pay for access to them.

 

This is what's referred to as format-shifting, and you can generally do this in most countries that have imposed any kind of levy on recording media.

 

With software it gets muddy, as you can only format shift the software (eg the game/application binary), not the assets. Yes, in Australia.

 

And that's another one of those gotcha's with software. If the software was only released as a EXE installer (such as a digital download, or from steam) and is never unpacked into a billion files, you may still be able to make that claim. 

I am talking about consumer law here, not specifics of the technology.  All games are considered products, therefore if I buy a game I  am entitled to play that game until the end of time.  Then it can be inherited by my kids and they can play it to the end of time.  It's like the consumer side of the copyright law where content creators get to own their product for 125 years or whatever, consumers are allowed to own their products for just as long (if not longer as there is no termination date on property ownership in this regard). 

 

So regardless how they ship a game, or in what format it comes or how it unpacks. If I have paid for a working copy then I am entitled to a working copy.   Of course my supposition regarding arguments that can be made in defense of downloading a game rest on that consumer law and have yet to be tried in a court.

 

 

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

I am talking about consumer law here, not specifics of the technology.  All games are considered products, therefore if I buy a game I  am entitled to play that game until the end of time.  Then it can be inherited by my kids and they can play it to the end of time.  It's like the consumer side of the copyright law where content creators get to own their product for 125 years or whatever, consumers are allowed to own their products for just as long (if not longer as there is no termination date on property ownership in this regard). 

 

So regardless how they ship a game, or in what format it comes or how it unpacks. If I have paid for a working copy then I am entitled to a working copy.   Of course my supposition regarding arguments that can be made in defense of downloading a game rest on that consumer law and have yet to be tried in a court.

 

 

https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ip-for-digital-business/develop/copyright

 

Quote

In Australia, there are specific exemptions to infringement which apply to software. These include copies made in the process of running the software, making back-ups, and testing and correcting bugs. Other general copyright exceptions can also apply.

 

End-user licence agreements that contain terms which prevent these exempted activities might have limited or no legal effect under Australian law. The same terms might be enforceable in jurisdictions outside of Australia, so it is good practice to set clear expectations of what users can do with your software and when selling access to your software, make sure you have well drafted legal agreements in place.

 

In regards to software assets:

https://www.smartcopying.edu.au/copyright-guidelines/what-can-i-copy-communicate-/2-11-computer-software

 

Quote

Back-up Copies

You are permitted to make a back-up copy for the purpose of

• being used or stored in lieu of the original
• enabling the owner to make a further reproduction if the original or the other reproduction is ‘lost, destroyed or rendered unusable’
• normal back up copying of data for security purposes (this extends to all copyright material held on the computer's operating system)

This exception does not apply to the making of a copy from an infringing or unlicensed copy or if the program has been designed so that copies cannot be made without modifying the program.

So no, you can not crack a game, and you can not download a copy from the internet. It has to be from your own software. Hence the entire thing about unpacked software. If you install it, you can move that installation as part of YOUR backup.

[mr moose]

22 minutes ago, Kisai said:

https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ip-for-digital-business/develop/copyright

 

 

In regards to software assets:

https://www.smartcopying.edu.au/copyright-guidelines/what-can-i-copy-communicate-/2-11-computer-software

 

So no, you can not crack a game, and you can not download a copy from the internet. It has to be from your own software. Hence the entire thing about unpacked software. If you install it, you can move that installation as part of YOUR backup.

I understand those laws, it's been a major interest of mine since the early 90's. There are two points here, 1. is that you may not make backups from infringing copies (in other words the law doesn't permit you to make backups of software you don't have a right to use) The second point you are missing is that under consumer law (which is different to CR law) users are entitled to the product they paid for.  Ergo while it still has to be tried in a court, there is no legal precedent that prevents one from obtaining a copy of software they already own a license to use.  Because consumers (even by whats written in the EULA) have purchased a license to use that software.  Under consumer law you cannot infringe copyright for using software you have paid for.