games

[Shachar Shemesh]

Mark Hannessen wrote:

>On Friday 01 November 2002 21:29, you wrote:
>  
>
>>On November 1, 2002 01:07 pm, Mark Hannessen wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>most games i own install and run ferfectly, but will not give you
>>>"out the box" experience because wine lacks good copy protection code.
>>>Diablo II is a good example
>>>
>>>Can't we be a little bit more flexible and add these games to the
>>>list as well ???
>>>      
>>>
>>Depends. What do you need to do to them to get them working?
>>    
>>
>
>copy protection, nothing more
>
>the problem is that there are license issues with copy protection that
>prevent us from inplenting it at all.
>
>but the game itself runs perfect.
>every function in Diablo II is inplented and working very very well
>framerate is even higher then in windows !!!
>
>you just need a crack to bypass the copy protection of the game
>
>Mark Hannessen
>
>
>  
>
I beg to differ. We do NOT need to crack these games, nor should we 
aspire to it. What we need is a method for the original game's code to 
verify that a legally CD is indeed in the drive.

In other words, we need to write code that, when used by the ORIGNAL 
copy protected software, will recognize copied CDs as copied and 
original CDs as original with similar false negatives to what the same 
code running on Windows does (if we have false positives, i.e. an 
original CD is mistook to be pirated, that is none of the copyright 
holder's beef with us).

Now, unlike the DeCSS case, where the code was AIMED at a similar 
purpose, but actually did something else, and unlike the elcomsoft case, 
where the actions performed by the program could be put to several uses, 
some bad and some good, in this case no copyright holder can take any 
beef with the final outcome. I see no reason for binary distributions to 
be available throughout the world, backwards places like the US included.

Personally, I don't think that anything can be said against the sources 
as well. This is nothing more than letting software that can use the 
Windows infrastructure to do non-standard things with the CD do the same 
non-standard things on Linux/*BSD/Solaris etc. The code itself need not 
contain anything relating to any copy protection technique at all.

If anyone thinks that is not the case, and hosting of this code on the 
main WineHQ site is not desired, I am willing to host the code on my 
site, and also take responsibility over it's maintanance.

            Shachar