Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/11/29/13:35:48
Kalum Somaratna aka Grendel writes:
> Actually Shawn, what made me suggest this was as the game
> company which market's Settlers2 distributed univbe on there cd in
> this way (ie unmodified trial version plus a crack to "register" it)
Are you absolutely sure about that? Forgive me for being sceptical,
but this sounds extremely implausible to me. Are you sure that this
crack utility wasn't added by some third party? (ie. that you got the
CD directly from the makers, and not from some intermediary source :-)
Or perhaps they had in fact licensed UniVBE from SciTech for
distribution along with the game, and this utility was simply the
process by which you registered your legal copy of it?
> I don't think scitech really can say anything about you distributing
> a crack program seperately (ie:- you arent cracking univbe yourself,
> you arent distributing the cracked version and you should be able to
> distribute a program (the crack) if the author allows it
I'm no lawyer, but I'm fairly sure that even if this isn't actually
illegal, SciTech would be able to bring a civil suit against you for
encouraging people to pirate their software. I don't know where
copyright law stands on this issue, but certainly in most areas of
the legal system, it is not cool to go around inciting people to
commit crimes. And I do know for a fact that Nintendo managed to ban
Bung Enterprises from importing the Doctor64 (an N64 game copying
device) into the USA. There was nothing illegal about the product
itself, but it was banned on the grounds that it was intended to be
used for making illegal copies, and had no other legitimate purpose.
I can't help thinking that a registration cracker program would
come in the same category...
And even if there was no actual way for them to sue you over this,
SciTech could always just deny you permission to bundle the trial
version of UniVBE along with your game, as soon as they realised what
you were doing with it.
Quite apart from the legality of the issue, it certainly isn't what
SciTech had in mind when releasing their program, and I think not
a nice thing to do on moral grounds. I'm a big fan of not having to
pay for my software, but it seems a shame if you are taking this so
far as to go around stealing programs from other people. That will
just result in a climate where everyone is paranoid and secretive
about their work: the exact opposite of the GNU-style freedom that
gives you rights and knowledge as well as just saving you money. If
you don't want to pay for a commercial program, why not just don't
use it, or even better, get stuck in and write a free replacement
of your own? (note: http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/freebe/index.html
is trying to do exactly that, and if every programmer who has a
graphics card would just spend some time to make sure their card is
supported by it, this whole problem would soon be a thing of the
past).
Shawn Hargreaves.
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