Law on ripping game media

[watercooled]

I just want to clear something up before I do it - is it legal to create backup isos of games purely for backup purposes ie if the disc gets damaged and I can burn a new copy. I wouldn't need to circumvent any copy protection as the games in question don't have any.
Thanks

[TAKTAK]

Hmmm, interesting, the illegal part tends to stem from breaking the copy protection in order to proceed but if they don't have copy protection, then i don't see any illegality in creating backups for PERSONAL usage

Unless of course the licence agreement specifically states no backups to be produced..

[watercooled]

I can't find any mention of it in the license so I'm assuming it's OK because of the fair use policy or whatever it's called. And yeah, it is purely for personal use as a backup.

Hmm - one of the games has weak sectors (SafeDisc I think) What's the law concerning circumventing that?

[Blitzen]

I rip most of my games to ISOs and play using Demon Tools.

Although i do not condone piracy, it is my game and i will continue to do this.....legal or not.

[Agent]

Section 50A of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act : Back up copies
50A.-(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to make any back up copy of it which it is necessary for him to have for the purposes of his lawful use.

Section 296 however makes it illegal to bypass any copy protection that the disk has.

There was something in PCZone ages ago (and I can't find the link atm ) who argued that copy protection would be illegal on disks, as it stopped a end user exercising their rights to backup that disk without breaking the law.

[Barney]

i'm the same as blitzen, i rip as many games as possible if i cant digi download them. create a bunch of virtual drives and mount the images so the games start on the spot instead of waiting for a drive to spin up...

there are a few tools out as freeware that will get the weak sectors sorted.

as for games that moan you have a virtual drive, well whats it got to do with them, so off i go to your fav game copy website and download a crack as i wont be told what i can have installed on my pc if i paid good money for a game.

[holy god of nil]

In general, and don't quote me on this because there are hundreds of contradictory arguments/examples, where a set of terms and conditions seeks to circumvent a law then you can ignore them for fun. Hence if my coat is stolen from a cloak room they can point at the sign saying it's not their responsibility as much as they like, they would lose if they bothered going to court over it.
Whether disc protection is stopping people making rightful backups I'm not quit sure, but IMO it is very doubtful that a company could win a case against a person breaking disc protection to make backups of media they owned for purely personal reasons

[Jay]

IMO it is very doubtful that a company could win a case against a person breaking disc protection to make backups of media they owned for purely personal reasons

I agree and I doubt they would risk going to court over it.

[kalniel]

I just want to clear something up before I do it - is it legal to create backup isos of games purely for backup purposes ie if the disc gets damaged and I can burn a new copy. I wouldn't need to circumvent any copy protection as the games in question don't have any.
Thanks

Nope, there's no legal permission to breach copyright for personal use backup purposes in this country.

I can't find any mention of it in the license so I'm assuming it's OK because of the fair use policy or whatever it's called. And yeah, it is purely for personal use as a backup.

Fair use would be using a very small snippet of the program I guess, not the whole thing. Personal use isn't any defense against copyright law either.

Hmm - one of the games has weak sectors (SafeDisc I think) What's the law concerning circumventing that?

If you bypass that then you're committing a much more serious offence than purely copying copyright material.

Section 50A of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act : Back up copies
50A.-(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to make any back up copy of it which it is necessary for him to have for the purposes of his lawful use.

And it goes on to define some examples of lawful necessary uses of back up copies, such as journalism etc. Just for personal use as a back up is not one of them.

There was something in PCZone ages ago (and I can't find the link atm ) who argued that copy protection would be illegal on disks, as it stopped a end user exercising their rights to backup that disk without breaking the law.

There isn't any legal right to a backup in the UK for most people. They may have been complaining about the journalism bit though.

In general, and don't quote me on this because there are hundreds of contradictory arguments/examples, where a set of terms and conditions seeks to circumvent a law then you can ignore them for fun. Hence if my coat is stolen from a cloak room they can point at the sign saying it's not their responsibility as much as they like, they would lose if they bothered going to court over it.
Whether disc protection is stopping people making rightful backups I'm not quit sure, but IMO it is very doubtful that a company could win a case against a person breaking disc protection to make backups of media they owned for purely personal reasons

Actually I think they would win very easily, it's just not in their interests to pursue it compared to going after the people who distribute copies to other people.

[Zak33]

Does anyone fancy a challenge?

[watercooled]

Nope, there's no legal permission to breach copyright for personal use backup purposes in this country.

Would I really be breaching copyright? After all I wouldn't be distributing it or anything. I won't bother copying the SafeDisc one anyway since it's the only one with it and I also prefer not to have it's driver on my system as it is.

I don't see why people implement DRM TBH - it's broken easily in hours after release so anyone who would go to the length of pirating it wouldn't care about circumventing copy protection but it's just a pain in the rear end for anyone else. And isn't it like entrapment or something? I mean forcing someone to break the law to follow another?

[watercooled]

Does anyone fancy a challenge?

Hmm, how do you mean

[Zak33]

Well, I wondered if....

if you had a scratched, but perfectly legal, shop purchased copy of a game...

would the producer of that game send you a new disk, in exchange for your old one, with proof of purchase?

Just wondered if anyone wanted to..... try?

[Barney]

EA do, but i think there is a charge to do it to cover postage and packaging

[Stringent]

Well, I wondered if....

if you had a scratched, but perfectly legal, shop purchased copy of a game...

would the producer of that game send you a new disk, in exchange for your old one, with proof of purchase?

Just wondered if anyone wanted to..... try?

EA have been known to send out replacement disks at a cost. I did start to venture into this with C&C2, but then discovered the game was on budget label for less than the surcharge they wanted.

[watercooled]

Exactly - for a charge - why should we need to pay (and bother EA) when it's very simple to create an iso and keep it on a backup HDD then, if needed in the future, burn it to a DVD R?