copy protection - was: Re: Is it time for playing games on WINE?

[Troy Rollo]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 02:29, Mike Hearn wrote:

> I don't think there's any legal issue anyway. There are no laws against
> cracking copy protection unless you're in the states and it's got
> encryption.

You want to be careful here. There's also laws in Australia against bypassing 
a "technological protection measure". Actually, the laws are against 
"manufacturing" a "circumvention device" (as well as some other commercial 
conduct in relation to such devices). If Wine included software that checked 
and used the copyright protection information on the CD, there would be no 
problem, but if it were to fake it without checking the CD, there would be 
problems with some activities in Australia.

On the other hand, *using* a circumvention device is legal.

See: Sony v Stevens [2003] FCAFC 157 
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCAFC/2003/157.html>

And the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) ss10, 116A 
<http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/0/244/top.htm>

As for cracking the copy protection by modifying the code, that is creating a 
derivative work, which is also potentially infringing, but this will depend 
on some fairly fiddly details of laws that will vary a lot from one country 
to another.