On 10/3/06, Michael [Plouj] Ploujnikov ploujj@gmail.com wrote:
I'm by no means an expert on copyright law or copy protection, but I think that using any method other than writing directly to the MBR with those copy protection measures would be illegal because writing to a file (registry, wine-only proprietary db or any other type of file) as opposed to writing to the mbr like the copy protection is supposed to could potentially reveal data that the copy protection companies don't want being revealed, and therefore that would end up making wine a possible target for aiding circumvention. Sure there are tools out there that crackers use that read the mbr and store it in a file, so that they can circumvent the copy protection, but that has nothing to do with wine.
We should allow are technical solutions to be bogged down with the EUCD, we are clearly protected for making a compatible program and I think we should strive to introduce the protection under the technical means we have available.
the fact that we allow the copy protection to work at all proves we have no malicious intent.
It would clearly be dangerous to write to the MBR and I would not recommend us doing so.