Posted January 02, 2015
high rated
Not long ago you announced an upcoming update to your user policies and user agreement.
The new user agreement includes this paragraph about reverse engineering:
9.1 (b) We want you to be free to use your own GOG
content and back it up etc, but equally we need to have
legal rules to protect against misuse of the GOG content.
So (unless you have prior GOG permission) please don’t
modify, merge, distribute, translate, reverse engineer,
decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works of
GOG services or GOG content – unless you’re allowed in
this Agreement or by the law in your country.
It's quite problematic to reconcile with your official DRM-free stance in such form. Let me explain why. For that it's necessary to clarify some historic background about DRM and surrounding legal climate.
DRM proponents (such as and the like) weren't satisfied with the mere usage of DRM, since they quite quickly realized that it's completely ineffective to prevent any piracy. They devised a legal framework around it which forbids breaking DRM, and even publishing research on how to break it. Those are called anticircumvention laws ([url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention]see here for the list of such laws in different countries). However they wanted much more than just preventing breaking DRM for infringing purposes. They wanted to forbid removing DRM for any legitimate purpose as well (research, interoperability, personal back ups, and other forms of fair use). I.e. they wanted indiscriminately to forbid it outright. Not that such framework prevented any piracy either - it didn't. But it gave them something else, read on.
When they attempted to present such laws to local parliaments, those initially refused since they could see that such laws are draconian and forbid legal fair use and as well can even violate common rights like free speech (when for example you publish research on breaking DRM). DRM proponents weren't deterred though. They turned to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which was much easier to manipulate since it doesn't have a proper democratic process. They managed to put anticircumvention proposals into WIPO international treaties and agreements. Once they cemented those, they turned back to local parliaments and said: "Hey, you can't ignore your international obligations! You need to pass local anticircumvention laws!". And that undemocratic and corrupt backdoor scam worked. Most parliaments around the world passed those laws (like DMCA-1201 in USA). See here for historic overview of this corrupt process and those who were involved in that scheming.
Once DRM proponents got those laws in place, they started using them for all kind of nasty stuff from censorship to preventing competition, but that's really besides the point. The main point is that those corrupt laws are in place, and efforts to repeal them (like this one) are a very hard uphill battle.
So now with understanding the current legal climate around DRM, let's go back to GOG user agreement. It forbids to "reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble <...> GOG services or GOG content – unless you’re allowed in this Agreement or by the law in your country".
Now consider for example recent addition to GOG service - password on RAR packages in the installer. It hinders Linux users or anyone who would prefer to unpack them manually for example. So community looked into it, disassembling / reverse engineering the way to calculate those passwords. All that was fair use of those who pay GOG for these games. Sounds good? Not really according to this user agreement, and even the phrase about "allowed by laws in your country" doesn't help it, since as above laws in many countries forbid even fair use DRM breaking.
I hope you can see now that such language in the user agreement is problematic in the light of your DRM-free stance because of the sickening legal climate around DRM.
Can you please look into fixing that part of the user agreement somehow. For example add there "unless it's for the purpose of fair use" or anything like that, which would nullify restrictions placed by anticircumvention laws on such kind of activity?
It's somewhat ironic that you yourself benefited from reverse engineering and tinkering with old games, running them not in originally intended way and etc. Since it allowed you to bring them to modern platforms. Forbidding that now for your paying customers when it's fair use case would be strange at least, and not in the DRM-free spirit.
________________________
* Please vote for the corresponding wishlist entry.
The new user agreement includes this paragraph about reverse engineering:
9.1 (b) We want you to be free to use your own GOG
content and back it up etc, but equally we need to have
legal rules to protect against misuse of the GOG content.
So (unless you have prior GOG permission) please don’t
modify, merge, distribute, translate, reverse engineer,
decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works of
GOG services or GOG content – unless you’re allowed in
this Agreement or by the law in your country.
DRM proponents (such as and the like) weren't satisfied with the mere usage of DRM, since they quite quickly realized that it's completely ineffective to prevent any piracy. They devised a legal framework around it which forbids breaking DRM, and even publishing research on how to break it. Those are called anticircumvention laws ([url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention]see here for the list of such laws in different countries). However they wanted much more than just preventing breaking DRM for infringing purposes. They wanted to forbid removing DRM for any legitimate purpose as well (research, interoperability, personal back ups, and other forms of fair use). I.e. they wanted indiscriminately to forbid it outright. Not that such framework prevented any piracy either - it didn't. But it gave them something else, read on.
When they attempted to present such laws to local parliaments, those initially refused since they could see that such laws are draconian and forbid legal fair use and as well can even violate common rights like free speech (when for example you publish research on breaking DRM). DRM proponents weren't deterred though. They turned to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which was much easier to manipulate since it doesn't have a proper democratic process. They managed to put anticircumvention proposals into WIPO international treaties and agreements. Once they cemented those, they turned back to local parliaments and said: "Hey, you can't ignore your international obligations! You need to pass local anticircumvention laws!". And that undemocratic and corrupt backdoor scam worked. Most parliaments around the world passed those laws (like DMCA-1201 in USA). See here for historic overview of this corrupt process and those who were involved in that scheming.
Once DRM proponents got those laws in place, they started using them for all kind of nasty stuff from censorship to preventing competition, but that's really besides the point. The main point is that those corrupt laws are in place, and efforts to repeal them (like this one) are a very hard uphill battle.
So now with understanding the current legal climate around DRM, let's go back to GOG user agreement. It forbids to "reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble <...> GOG services or GOG content – unless you’re allowed in this Agreement or by the law in your country".
Now consider for example recent addition to GOG service - password on RAR packages in the installer. It hinders Linux users or anyone who would prefer to unpack them manually for example. So community looked into it, disassembling / reverse engineering the way to calculate those passwords. All that was fair use of those who pay GOG for these games. Sounds good? Not really according to this user agreement, and even the phrase about "allowed by laws in your country" doesn't help it, since as above laws in many countries forbid even fair use DRM breaking.
I hope you can see now that such language in the user agreement is problematic in the light of your DRM-free stance because of the sickening legal climate around DRM.
Can you please look into fixing that part of the user agreement somehow. For example add there "unless it's for the purpose of fair use" or anything like that, which would nullify restrictions placed by anticircumvention laws on such kind of activity?
It's somewhat ironic that you yourself benefited from reverse engineering and tinkering with old games, running them not in originally intended way and etc. Since it allowed you to bring them to modern platforms. Forbidding that now for your paying customers when it's fair use case would be strange at least, and not in the DRM-free spirit.
________________________
* Please vote for the corresponding wishlist entry.
Post edited January 06, 2015 by shmerl
