I've moved this topic to Milliways.

If it's not available for purchase now, then it'll be available for purchase later.

Patience is a virtue. Ghost 8 is not Bioforce Ape and neither are all the "R@RE L@@K" pc games you might find.

Hirens Boot CD contains a lot of stuff that is still copyrighted by various companies and that was never licensed for legal, freeware distribution. If this bothers you, then don't use it. It's that simple, really. (BSA shock troopers are not going to come breaking down your door if you download Hirens Boot CD. Probably.)

The companies in question are probably aware of the CD's existence. I might speculate that the people involved feel that trying to stamp out its existence with legal threats would merely call more attention to it and make them look like bad guys – whereas as it is, it's really only of interest to a small number of hobbyists who are giving them free advertising for their newer products using software they have no financial interest in supporting anyway. But that is speculation.

If it is still copyrighted (and everything still is) and not explicitly made freeware by the copyright owners... Then it's warez.
Whether you think thelaws are morally justified and whether you want to break them is entirely up to you.

If it's about tbe forum "no warez" policy then stick to the law...

And indeed Hiren's BootCD in recent revisions added conspicuous disclaimers saying that the SW is arranged on the CD for convenience only, and that if you don't own a license to said software, you should not use it.

dr_st wrote:

And indeed Hiren's BootCD in recent revisions added conspicuous disclaimers saying that the SW is arranged on the CD for convenience only, and that if you don't own a license to said software, you should not use it.

This is what I think about warez. If you own something its not warez even if you happen to download a fixed better working version from the pirates in the bay. If you do not own something its still warez even if you install the program using your friends original disc, at least if he is using said program aswell.

Im very glad cracked/fixed versions of stuff exist but that isnt the same as saying its OK to use programs or games you do not own.

If it's copyrighted and obtained in an "unofficial" manner, then it's warez... not that I really mind, but it does feel good to have legal copies of things, even if it's just to say that I own them. 😉 Truth be told, the convenience of services like Steam and GoG provides a really nice alternative to sketchy abandonware sites... although they still lack a number of titles that are highly requested.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

If it's copyrighted and obtained in an "unofficial" manner, then it's warez... not that I really mind, but it does feel good to have legal copies of things, even if it's just to say that I own them. 😉 Truth be told, the convenience of services like Steam and GoG provides a really nice alternative to sketchy abandonware sites... although they still lack a number of titles that are highly requested.

To me it dosnt matter how you obtain stuff, as long you have bought it the correct way once and have the right to use it.

If one of my discs gets scratched and cant be read or if I buy a game and disc 3 of 5 is missing I source a new one using the most convinient way.

Skyscraper wrote:

To me it dosnt matter how you obtain stuff, as long you have paid for it once.

This way is logical to many, and until recent years it was accepted by the industry as well.

Recently, however, the media companies are pushing towards criminalization of any act of duplication that is not through them. Their reasoning as simple: such acts of duplication are significantly more likely to be used for unlicensed use / warez, then for the cases you described, which would be legitimate (getting a backup copy, recovering a damaged copy, transferring to a different device). So their policy (which is of course convenient to them and not to the users) is to automatically consider everyone a criminal, and have the users fight to prove that they are not.

For example, if you can prove that you paid for your game, and your disk got damaged, so you torrented the content, it is extremely likely that a judge will rule in your favor, but the process itself will be "punishment".

In parallel to the above, the media companies are actually reworking the licenses, so that under modern licenses, you often get authorization to only use the content on a specific device, in a specific way. Which means that the license restricts you in ways that the law does not, and even making backup copies may be considered a violation of the license. Whether it holds in court or not is hard for me to imagine.

dr_st wrote:

This way is logical to many, and until recent years it was accepted by the industry as well. […]
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Skyscraper wrote:

To me it dosnt matter how you obtain stuff, as long you have paid for it once.

This way is logical to many, and until recent years it was accepted by the industry as well.

Recently, however, the media companies are pushing towards criminalization of any act of duplication that is not through them. Their reasoning as simple: such acts of duplication are significantly more likely to be used for unlicensed use / warez, then for the cases you described, which would be legitimate (getting a backup copy, recovering a damaged copy, transferring to a different device). So their policy (which is of course convenient to them and not to the users) is to automatically consider everyone a criminal, and have the users fight to prove that they are not.

For example, if you can prove that you paid for your game, and your disk got damaged, so you torrented the content, it is extremely likely that a judge will rule in your favor, but the process itself will be "punishment".

In parallel to the above, the media companies are actually reworking the licenses, so that under modern licenses, you often get authorization to only use the content on a specific device, in a specific way. Which means that the license restricts you in ways that the law does not, and even making backup copies may be considered a violation of the license. Whether it holds in court or not is hard for me to imagine.

That type of licences dosnt hold water under Swedish law, but I know things are changing and not for the better.

It is like speeding: billions of drivers do it annually: how many get fined? 😁

Well, except the fines for speeding are much more reasonable and affordable, in most countries. Usually there is no criminal persecution and no chance of jail time, unless one, God forbid, actually kills someone while speeding.

In certain countries (Finland, I think?), the fines for speeding are proportional to income, which means that if you are immensely rich, the fine can be huge, but it's still OK, because you really can afford it, easily. That's not the case with the various RIAA/MPAA lawsuits that will sue any random person for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which that average person can never afford, and in some cases the legislation also allows for jail time, which is ridiculous considering the damage of the offense to society (almost zero, really). I think I read somewhere that current legislation in the US treats copyright infringement as a crime comparable to second-degree murder.

The claim, of course, is that because so few get caught/prosecuted, those who do must be punished severely to create an appropriate deterrent. This, however, ignores the fact that there also has to be some connection between the severity of the offense / the damage it causes and the punishment. And it completely ignores the question whether the society as a whole benefits from this level of copyright enforcement, or whether it gives the copyright holders unwarranted advantages.

squareguy wrote:

What would you consider warez? Obviously something that a company still sells and profits from. So If it can be purchased new from retail, online store, Steam, GoG, etc then I consider it warez, or to a lesser extent if it can be purchased second hand such as through a friend or eBay. But what if you need a utility that is not available for purchase? For instance, Symantec of course no longer sells Ghost 8.x (version that still supports DOS) and I do not see any copies on eBay. I know that the famous Hirens Boot CD contains a DOS executable of Ghost version 8.3. Would you consider using that executable warez in order to support a hardware/software platform that the maker no longer supports or profits from?

Anything still under copyright protection obtained through extralegal sources is warez.

Here is a fun way to look at it:
All binary software is directly convertible into a single large decimal number, which occurs on the natural number line.
These copyrights therefore are claiming ownership over a naturally occurring number.
If I download a bootleg cam of a movie and match its bit structure to that of the original they are clearly not the same. If I convert the binary image into its decimal form and compare, the numbers are way off from each other, yet the copyright laws here claim ownership over all these representations of the original works, even though clearly in the digital world they can be completely different numbers.

If we deal with small numbers for a simple example, 256 is not the same as 512, let's say 512 was a copyrighted image. By downloading 512 I have now broken a copyright law, but this number can be generated naturally as a power of 2, 2^9. So I scale this image down by half and get 256 which is clearly not 512 but it looks the same to our eyes just lesser quality. Copyrights will still claim that representation as their original works, even though it clearly is not the same data.

If I claim that all data generated by the formula 1+n is mine, I would own every conceivable digital piece of data to ever come into existence. You claim 512 as your own, I will say no that belongs to me as 1+511 is the formula I have to generate that number.

The numbers you deal with in a computer are so large they cannot be factored with current techniques, but one day they can and what then of their precious copyrights?
You could then just pirate the generating formula for that data, the ultimate procedural compression. A small file of formula data to generate all those gigs of pirated content 😀

So this whole system hinges on the fact that these numbers are not easily generated or stumbled across and therefore you committed a deliberate act to gain them into your possession. But at the end of the day, a cam rip of a movie is "not" the same data they claim as their original works.

I wonder if this logic once refined could hold up in a court...

ZanQuance wrote:

I wonder if this logic once refined could hold up in a court...

Probably not. This isn't the first time I've seen an argument along these lines and I'm sure there are many elaborate rebuttals to be found out there by now, and elaborate counter-rebuttals, and counter-counter-rebuttals.

ZanQuance wrote:

Here is a fun way to look at it:
So this whole system hinges on the fact that these numbers are not easily generated or stumbled across and therefore you committed a deliberate act to gain them into your possession. But at the end of the day, a cam rip of a movie is "not" the same data they claim as their original works.

Qentis aims to produce all possible combinations of text (and later on images and sound) and to copyright them

There was this website bootdisk.com, it had all the DOS boot disks. Very handy, but they have now disappeared.

philscomputerlab wrote:

There was this website bootdisk.com, it had all the DOS boot disks. Very handy, but they have now disappeared.

The site is working here on my end BootDisk.com
Something blocking it on your end?

ZanQuance wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

There was this website bootdisk.com, it had all the DOS boot disks. Very handy, but they have now disappeared.

The site is working here on my end BootDisk.com
Something blocking it on your end?

Oh, nice, it's working again 😀

Very odd. Maybe an issue with my ISP at home. Works at work.