I will start by saying that I am not a lawyer, but I have been watching the legal side of what has been going on for quite a while. Since Game Jackal is currently unsupported, and there is so much speculation on what happened, I figured a thread to discuss the laws that have brought this about might be a good idea.
There are a number of groups out there that have tried to make things like NOCD patches, and similar things illegal. Organizations like the MPAA and RIAA in the USA have been trying to push to make it illegal to do ANYTHING to work around the copy protections, which I suspect are the reason for what happened with Game Jackal. The sad thing is, these laws don't give any consideration to fair use in their attempt to fight those who make a living by selling copyrighted materials.
So, what we have is programs like Game Jackal, Alcohol 120%, Clone CD, and others which are designed to let the user take an image of the original CD/DVD so that you don't need to keep the disc in the drive while playing. These programs, and others go on the idea that they are NOT there for those trying to violate the terms of the software license(aka you should not use them to play the game on multiple computers with just one purchased copy).
Unfortunately, there are those(the companies that develop CD/DVD copy protection) that feel that if too many people use a NOCD patch to get around their intrusive copy protection system that software publishers will stop putting copy protection on their products and use a software license/activation key model instead. So, they push, and push, and stupid politicians who really don't understand what is going on make laws to cause problems for honest people.
The RIAA/MPAA get involved in this discussion because of the copy protection on DVDs, as well as on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. These two groups push to make it illegal to work around copy protection because with movies, there is NO alternatives without the copy protection. So, they push to make it so you can't make a copy(since the copy would have the protection removed), and to even try forcing people to get a license before they can invite a friend over to watch a movie. For these organizations, they don't limit their push to copy protection of movies or music, they just make it a blanket thing that no one should be able to work around ANY copy protection at all.
For myself, I personally feel that the source of the problems stems from the RIAA/MPAA not limiting the scope of the protection they push for. If they would push for laws that ONLY apply to music and/or movies, then we wouldn't see a problem for Game Jackal and the others. So, there are broad laws written that say that ANYTHING that gets around the protection in any way is now illegal. God forbid that common sense would apply and let us play the games we pay for without putting a CD/DVD in the drive.
There are a number of groups out there that have tried to make things like NOCD patches, and similar things illegal. Organizations like the MPAA and RIAA in the USA have been trying to push to make it illegal to do ANYTHING to work around the copy protections, which I suspect are the reason for what happened with Game Jackal. The sad thing is, these laws don't give any consideration to fair use in their attempt to fight those who make a living by selling copyrighted materials.
So, what we have is programs like Game Jackal, Alcohol 120%, Clone CD, and others which are designed to let the user take an image of the original CD/DVD so that you don't need to keep the disc in the drive while playing. These programs, and others go on the idea that they are NOT there for those trying to violate the terms of the software license(aka you should not use them to play the game on multiple computers with just one purchased copy).
Unfortunately, there are those(the companies that develop CD/DVD copy protection) that feel that if too many people use a NOCD patch to get around their intrusive copy protection system that software publishers will stop putting copy protection on their products and use a software license/activation key model instead. So, they push, and push, and stupid politicians who really don't understand what is going on make laws to cause problems for honest people.
The RIAA/MPAA get involved in this discussion because of the copy protection on DVDs, as well as on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. These two groups push to make it illegal to work around copy protection because with movies, there is NO alternatives without the copy protection. So, they push to make it so you can't make a copy(since the copy would have the protection removed), and to even try forcing people to get a license before they can invite a friend over to watch a movie. For these organizations, they don't limit their push to copy protection of movies or music, they just make it a blanket thing that no one should be able to work around ANY copy protection at all.
For myself, I personally feel that the source of the problems stems from the RIAA/MPAA not limiting the scope of the protection they push for. If they would push for laws that ONLY apply to music and/or movies, then we wouldn't see a problem for Game Jackal and the others. So, there are broad laws written that say that ANYTHING that gets around the protection in any way is now illegal. God forbid that common sense would apply and let us play the games we pay for without putting a CD/DVD in the drive.