Singing Potatoes
Previous — Main Page — Up to Archive — Next
Friday, 15 August 2003
Random topics.

Was knocked out yesterday by a mystery twelve-hour fever. It all started in the wee hours, when I woke up afraid I was going to freeze to death. In Florida. In August. In a house where the air conditioning is not always satisfactory (to be charitable). Fortunately, my joints have stopped aching, the room has stopped spinning, and my temperature is back down to its usual 97.4 degrees1.

I wonder about the legality of copy-protected CDs. 17 USC 117 explicitly grants users of computer programs the right to make an archival copy without it being considered copyright infringement. 17 USC 1201, though, makes it illegal to circumvent copy-protection schemes, which would seem to abrogate the user's right to make a backup of a protected disc. Or, for example, use software to copy them to image files on your hard drive so you don't have to stick the disc into your computer every time you want to run a program.

1. That would be 36.333 degrees anywhere but Burma, Liberia and the United States.

Posted by godfrey (link)
Previous — Main Page — Up to Archive — Next
Comments
Maybe we request archive copies from all the companies we have software from, since we aren't allowed to do it ourselves.
Posted by Lunchbox on 18 Aug 2003 07:05
I'd love to try that, just to see what kind of response I'd get.

Unfortunately, there's only one product I use that has a copy-protected CD, and I'm already on thin ice with the company because of an April Fool's prank I pulled last year. And come to think of it, the prank involved bypassing their copy protection...

Posted by Godfrey on 18 Aug 2003 07:24
Ha, I remember that well!

I can't remember if I was the Mac user, though... but my narcisstic tendencies have been well-documented elsewhere....

Incidentally, Apple's Disk Copy doesn't do it, but I haven't tried Toast yet. Just a pain in the a** to switch CDs given that my wife is now addicted to the Sims...
Posted by Zachary Brewster-Geisz on 18 Aug 2003 19:52
I don't know how the Mac version does it, but the Windows version 10.5 uses SafeDisc v2.9 — which depends on checking random blocks within the first 10,000 sectors of the CD, hundreds of which are deliberately bad. Annoying as heck, since the drive spends a long time trying to read bad sectors.

Since there are a number of copy programs out there which duplicate bad blocks (and virtual drives which can emulate them), the copy-protection scheme really does nothing more than irritate legitimate users, since the discs can still be copied.

Posted by Godfrey on 18 Aug 2003 20:11
Zach, I went back and found my inbox from that time period, and you were indeed the Mac user in question.

Small world.

Posted by Godfrey on 21 Aug 2003 12:45