Copy protection

[Christoph Frick]

On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 04:25:38AM -0400, Tim Schmidt wrote:

> What we're talking about here is a class of applications that expect
> raw (or nearly-raw) disk access:
> 
> - copy-protection that writes mysterious things to or near the MBR
> - various utility software (virus scanners, disk defragmenters,
> forensic tools, etc.)
> - other possibilities?

IMHO you can rule out #2. the majority of people using wine want to use
their last few remaining apps they have no counterpart for unix and all
their games. all these are copy-protection-pestered.

the #2 folks are proficient enough with their systems to know what they
are doing. the #1 folks hope to get away from the world of #2 things
they are forced on the windows world when they change to unix.

so #1 is definetly something that should be done with "files" - not
"disks" - to prevent the masses from fiddling with /dev/sda permissions
or running WINE as root.

for the "law" point of view - i though about it from the comments of
yesterdays discussion. reducing this to the plain thing i guessed so
far:

- assuming windows dont let anyone write directly to the disk the app
  has to gain some higher privs first

- as this is no go for most of the admins out there i assume this apps
  install their .sys files all over the place and run as "drivers" so
  they get that extra privs granted

- so here comes my big blank: once they have the privs: do the drivers
  actually work the machine or are they still using the win-api for
  stuff like writing to the disk?

if the winapi is used i would asume there is no law-problem other than
all the law problem "we allready have". but if they directly access the
machine - can we actually intercept it?

-- 
cu
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