[Wine] Re: things I miss in wine

[Tlarhices]

oiaohm wrote:
> Lets be a little clear here.
> 
> We cannot do a fake starforce driver since that gets on the wrong side of DCMA.  Its intentionally setting out to disable copy protection.
> 
> Now providing fake wrappers answering all the questions the starforce driver asks is permitted under compatibility grounds.  This does not mean that the copy protection is working perfectly any more.  Like it may no longer detect that you have a Linux based cheat since it is most likely not seeing the Linux side.  This falls into the compatibility section of DCMA and is legal.
> 
> Applying cracks to the program as a temporary measure while working on getting the normal interface working is also still permitted.
> 
> Nothing says that the copy protection still has to be working right.  Just that we did not intentionally set out to disable it.


To be more clear, this statement might be right in your country but not in others. 

Applying cracks even in the sake of temporary compatibility can be seen has illegal by some countries as long as these cracks have not been officially made by the original product creator (and there are not much existing).

Providing wrappers in the aim to fake the copy protection is also not legal. If a copy protection system is faked by something that is not intended to have this result (partial implementations, bugs, api changes...) and the license is not restricting the use of the copy protection with this kind of systems is legal.

So from an worldwide legal vision, the use of cracks or anything made to fake a security device (may it be for compatibility) are illegal.
If a security system is faked accidentally in a use compelling with the license of the product and of the protection system, then I think no country can consider it as illegal.

So patching wine to have starforce say "OK, your disk is a real one" by faking the results is not legal because it will make illegal version works by  actually bypassing the security tests and so bypassing the purpose of the security (aka. creating a universal crack for this protection system).

Creating (or trying to) create a 1:1 implementation of the software / driver / kernel layer used by starforce to detect a real cd and having some fake positives and some fake negatives due to errors *might* be seen as legal if it complies with the starforce license and the one of the product using it.