PC Games It's Now Legal to Use No-CD Cracks for Games with Dead DRM Servers

[vissha]

It's Now Legal to Use No-CD Cracks for Games with Dead DRM Servers

The new rule applies only in the United States

It's now legal to apply no-CD cracks to single-player games that point to long-dead DRM servers. It's not a big step for the US Copyright Office, but at least it's a move in the right direction.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were to download a crack for a game that you could no longer activate as genuine because the servers that host the other part of the DRM process died of old age? Well, if you haven't, it looks like someone did and actually tried to make something about it.

Most of the PC games out there have some sort of protection, and many of them employ protection that would require the users to authenticate online, either in a complicated process or with just a serial number. There are plenty of people with non-working games in their library because the DRM servers are no longer online. The solution seems simple. You own the title - just apply a crack. It turns out that's actually illegal, or at least it used to be in the US.

Cracks are no longer illegal, for some games

According to a report on kitguru.net, the US Copyright Office has issued a new ruling that exempts this type of games from the effect of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It's a small victory, and it doesn't apply to the multiplayer part of the same titles or multiplayer-only games. Also, don't even try to think about using the same rules for console games. It's still illegal to use a pirated copy for a game that you own.

The US Copyright Office is not known for its expediency, and it's usually too late to the party. In this case, they hit the spot and in due time. Please keep in mind that the resolution only applies for the US and not for Europe or any other region.

Source

[SPECTRUM]

cracks are legal for abandoned software or for personal usage in education, in research or for entertainment, in any place.

[RejZoR]

If there wasn't any retarded DRM, we wouldn't even have problems like this. Compatiblity has always been the problem just because of retarded DRM. Either CD checks were failing on new OS versions or the games simply failed to work. But people who pirated them never had problems. Kinda ironic isn't it?

[SnakeMasteR]

Ubisoft (RELOADED) and Rock* (Myth) practiced their usage a long time ago. :P