WineHQ should discourage the use of cracks

[Pavel Troller]

> On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 03:35:11PM +0100, Kai Blin wrote:
> 
> > No argument on the US part. I'm still convinced that by EU laws,
> > you're allowed to crack an app you bought in order to make it run on
> > your software.  As this hasn't been tested in court yet, though, I'll
> > concede.
> 
> IANAL, but since 2008 germany adopted a law from a EU proposal (maybe
> other countries added it before), that disallows circumventing copy
> protections at all. so in theory your statement is not true any longer
> for the EU.
> 
Hi!
  Here, in Czech Republic, there is also a new law forbidding to circumvent
the copy protection, it probably comes from the same european source as the
German one.
  However, using cracks to make the app running on wine can't be primarily
classified as "circumventing copy protection", but as "modifying an app to
run on other OS", which is, I hope, still legal. I think that if I own a legal
copy of an application, didn't make any illegal copies of it, and just
modified it to run in wine, any court on the world should decide, that my
intention was not to circumvent the copy protection (because it is not of
any importance to me, I already legally have it), but to make it working
(yes, I've spent my money to use the app and I had to modify it to be able to
use it). Our courts have to evidence my invention to make a punishable act
(like to circumvent the copy protection to either get a pirated copy or to
sell my pirated copies to anybody else), but if I did something similar, but
for evidently another purpose (to run the legally owned app), I think that
it's not a punishable act. Something similar happened recently - a court
set free an old woman which was growing marihuana strictly for medical purpose,
even if there is a law strictly prohibiting to grow marihuana at all. Of course
IANAL, but my kids are running cracked games on wine, however we HAVE all the
CDs including bills from the shop for everybody, who would like to accuse us of
using illegal software.

  With regards, Pavel Troller