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re: Why are cracks illegal?
Thursday, December 27, 2001 at 7:46 pm
Windows Me Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Sam Katz
(1 messages posted)
I am a liberal who believes in copyright rights, but *they* are iilegal because it
is possible for a corporation to need legitimate protection. Take Trillian, a FREE
software that people cracked so it said they donated.. cracks go too far.
Take Paint Shop Pro, an excellent program still pined for by me even after trying
the free alternative (www.gimp.org/win32), plus PSP never expires.
But why is it iilegal? Because the TOS and copyright label states "All Rights Reserved"..an
add-on that circumvents that copyright is against the law, and is called a crack.
On Friday, December 21, 2001 at 8:31 am, khawk wrote:
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>On Sunday, November 25, 2001 at 11:06 am, UnDEAD wrote:
>I think they are illegal because they're made by reverse engineering the product
>(... but how do they prove this?), and because you're not allowed to modify the
>program
>in it's binary form...
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>*what the hell... you can't even debug an operating system you bought?* Well, you
>can... But you're not allowed to spread information, tools, utilities, papers on
>what you've learned...
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>On Monday, November 12, 2001 at 12:00 pm, mmp wrote:
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>You mention that cracks are unethical and illegal. Why exactly? Unethical - i
>guess
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>that is up to individuals to decide. I don't agree that it is illegal. The DMCA
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>protects circumvension of encryption techniques to gain access to copyright materials.
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> Is WPA really an encryption technique? I don't think so. What other laws could
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>be used to consider WPA cracks illegal?
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>Reverse Engineering and Cracks weren't illegal for the longest time. Especially
reverse
>engineering for the purpose of Compatibility. (Now don't get too fancy and think
>that this ment making an unactivated WinXP compatible with your new computer, not
>the same thing.) The intent was for making technologies such as DVD movies play
in
>foriegn and unsupported enviroments like Linux. However, a few years ago, Congress
>passed the DMCA Act which made it illegal to reverse engineer technologies that
were
>intended to protect copywritten material. This definition is extremely vague, but
>does indeed cover cracks that disable the product activation. Many of the things
>you may have done in the past are now illegal today such as copying your Favorite
>VHS tape to Beta. (remember those?) Or copying your game CD's to keep in the event
>that you lost the original. Bottom line, you no longer own what you buy, you merely
>rent the right to use it in their terms.
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 |  | |  | re: Why are cracks illegal? (Sam Katz: Thu, Dec 27, 2001, 7:46 pm) |
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