Possible to back up PC games?

aaf

First of all, not sure whether this is the right place for this. A friend of mine just asked me is it possible to back up PC games. He's getting the new Championship Manager game on Friday and wants to be able to bring a copy into work so he can play it at lunchtime. Is it possible to backup these games or are they copy protected? If they are dvd's, I should have no problem using DVD Decryptor, right?

Static M.e.

You can alright and are allowed to make 1 copy for a backup, I could post links but I dont think the Mods would like it

stevenmu

afaik DVD Decrypter is just for DVD movies. DVD movie copy protection works (or at least is supposed to )by encrypting the content. The only way to view it then is to have a decryption key. To get a decryption key companies who make players had to sign an agreement to prevent their hardware/software being used to copy the content.

Game copy protection, I think, works by deliberatly introducing errors onto the disk. There's a table at the start of the disk that says whereacouts on the disk all the various files are. What they do then is either put a file somewhere on the disk that isn't in the table or put an entry in the table for a file that doesn't exist. When you try to load a game it can check that this error exists on the disk, most copying software will automatically correct these errors so if your disk doesn't have them it knows that it's a fake. There are obvious ways around this using some perfectly legitimate software but the context makes it kind of a grey area for linking to it, so unless a mod wanders by and says it's ok, I won't.

Kazu

there are quite a few programs any way try ultra iso or alcohol 120%

and deamon tools to mount the iso if you dont want to burn to disk

Khannie

Static M.e. wrote:

You can alright and are allowed to make 1 copy for a backup, I could post links but I dont think the Mods would like it

Thanks Static and Stevenmu for your restraint

Static: You sure about that 1 copy for backup? I wouldn't have thought so. If you can provide some legitimate looking linkage then I'll allow links to backup software be posted.

I know of one piece of commercial software for game backup, but I thought it was mired in legal wranglings (in the US at least).

Khannie

Q: Is it legal for me to make backup copies of my software for my own personal use?
The law says yes: Archival backups are indeed legal. But your software’s license agreement may say no.

I'd rather err on the side of caution on this one aaf, so I'm gonna close this thread.

edit: linkage

In copyright law the whole thing falls under "fair use" (google copyright fair use). I'd say there's probably no problem doing it....but it seems that there's some murkiness there.