And 99% likely all games you are referring to are digital-download only, no physical disc. This would also include console systems that are basically diskless.

And, this is and always has been illegal.

I don't see why that justifies making it more difficult for the original owner to play the game than, for example, someone who torrented a cracked version, who wouldn't have to put up with this crap.

If anything, DRM actually encourages people to pirate just so they can play a game without going through hoops.

I purchased Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, and Doom from the same sale. I was only able to play Mass Effect 2. They were on DVD.
https://sorcerers.net/community/media/imag0663.4663/
Well, I'm sorely tempted to pirate Doom and Mass Effect 3. I have these used copies and the DRM prevents me from playing them.
I do look for cracks for the games I do own if I'm required to keep the original disk or disc in the drive in order to play because external media seems to have a magnetic attraction to the castors of my chair in the sense that they get dropped on the floor and when I pull back from the desk to pick it up I tend to hear a crunching noise.
I purchased Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, and Doom from the same sale. I was only able to play Mass Effect 2. They were on DVD.
https://sorcerers.net/community/media/imag0663.4663/
Well, I'm sorely tempted to pirate Doom and Mass Effect 3. I have these used copies and the DRM prevents me from playing them.
I do look for cracks for the games I do own if I'm required to keep the original disk or disc in the drive in order to play because external media seems to have a magnetic attraction to the castors of my chair in the sense that they get dropped on the floor and when I pull back from the desk to pick it up I tend to hear a crunching noise.
I purchased Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, and Doom from the same sale. I was only able to play Mass Effect 2. They were on DVD.
https://sorcerers.net/community/media/imag0663.4663/
Well, I'm sorely tempted to pirate Doom and Mass Effect 3. I have these used copies and the DRM prevents me from playing them. I do look for cracks for the games I do own if I'm required to keep the original disk or disc in the drive in order to play because external media seems to have a magnetic attraction to the castors of my chair in the sense that they get dropped on the floor and when I pull back from the desk to pick it up I tend to hear a crunching noise.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as an "illegaly kept" copy in germany.

If you currently are in possesion (not even ownership!) of media of any type, you are allowed to make a personal copy of it, unless you need to circumvent any form of copy protection to do so. And if you are allowed to make a copy - I do not know of any ruling or law that says you have to delete any legally made copies.

This means it's even legal in germany to copy a borrowed product. Again, only if you don't need to circumvent any copy protection, may it as easy to be, as it sometimes is/was. Since it's sometimes really easy, it might be hard to really make a legal copy of something.

On the other hand, it's not a legal copy, if you get the hands on someone else's copy. So downloading a backup that is not your's, is actually not allowed, even if you currently hold a legit product.

But to add to the confusion: you can let someone else make your copy. Though both of you need to have legal access to the same source material (e. g. the other one uses your physical media, or public streamed video signal etc.; for the last point, there is even a curt ruling somewhere to be found, from times where online tv recorder where more common).

But in my humble opinion:
I also think it should be 100% legit to want to use and keep and backup something you lawfullly, legally and officially bought for. No matter the laws and rulings. And any company thinking otherwise - or even thinking of taking legal methods, should reconsider.

We can also start not to buy and consume media. And it should be our right to decide on how we want to enjoy that content. Be it on a different ebook-reader, without a CD check or from a bootable usb stick, with or without a launcer and whatnot.

I might consider enforcement of multiple purchases per household to be fair, even if I dislike the idea. But after all you want to play together a product, so it's fair and square to demand multiple pruchases.

Then i wonder if we switch the topic a little.

John Deere has DRM in their tractors, they are pushing quite hard to make it impossible to be able to modify or fix hardware farmers own, or replace the software with their own; They have also shown their DRM is broad where they shut down tractors in Ukraine.

So i ask coming back to games, but in hardware in general. Why is it wrong to do things with your owned hardware or software? Be it modifying DVD drives to let you play copied games on your 360, to copying iso's be it 1 or 100 copies? Or cracking the game after copying it and saving it so it doesn't require something stupid like online 3-time activation or other such crap.

Remember copyright law is crap right now. Copyright was 'To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for a limited time to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings' not for corporations to own everything forever. It was intended you'd own the ability to reproduce something for 20 years or so and then it would go into the public domain. Keep in mind books and movie disks and tapes after 4 years are no longer in production of whatever it is they were making, so nearly all sales would be made from the copying of those objects at that point. Some authors once books go out of print want to put the works online for free but the printing presses/publishers refuse them that right.

The idea behind it is, is that if they decide to remake it, then people will be more inclined to buy it if they never had a chance to play the original due to it not being available.

Copying and so on negates that.. it's like the excuse is that they lose x amount of money because people obtain the game illegally rather than buy it, when half of them would likely just not bother playing it at all.


Honestly if it wasn't for things that could be obtained through other means, i would have never bought it.. in cases like games or music i'd never heard of it was thanks to alternative sources that let me try before i buy... otherwise i never would have.



Eitherway even if you backup a game and keep it forever and ever, the issue is being able to play it in years to come..

What do you mean? What's an accumpognative?

Accumpognative? It's a common word in these parts. I hope you will not object if I offer this user my most enthusiastic contrafibularities for such fine terminology. I'm anaspeptic, frasmodic even compunctious this word has caused you such perricombobulations.

Well, no, because I'm pretty sure converting the disk to an iso format does not remove the CD Key requirement.
CD Keys are a form of DRM.

Not to mention whatever other DRM methods are on the disk.

It's still a useful thing to do because it means you don't have to have a physical object on hand and allows you to forgo having a CD drive, but it will not necessarily bypass any DRM.

One thing to remember is that 30 years ago, copying a CD required very expensive equipment. It wasn't until the late 1990's that affordable CD burners became available. Therefore copy protection was not needed because very few people would have the means to copy the discs.
Also, hard drives 30 years ago were measured in megabytes, and were typically no larger than 80mb until the mid 1990's. Around 1995 there was a sudden advancement in hard drive technology and they started increasing in size.
So copying a CD into an .ISO was not a viable thing. Even in 1997, when 4gb drives were the norm, making an .ISO would take up a significant chunk of your hard drive. I recall at one point around 2000 a friend wanted to download and burn Linux using another friend's broadband connection, but had to download each of the 3 CDs it came on one at a time because his hard drive didn't have enough capacity to download all 3 ISOs.
The other friend wound up sicing his computer to download each one overnight (it was a "one meg modem"), and would burn it while getting ready to head to class (we were in college) and passed each CD one per day over the course of 3 days.

CD keys and DRM was invented to solve the "problem" of cheaply available CD burners, as well as the "problem" of people buying used copies of software rather than buying it from the manufacturer.