How To Copy Protected Dvd To Computer

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Harald Atta

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Aug 3, 2024, 11:36:27 AM8/3/24

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Courts considering the alleged copying of the structure, rather than literal copying of the text, of a computer program have usually concerned themselves with whether protected expression or an unprotected idea was copied. Courts have seldom suggested that it might be an unprotected process that was copied. However, this Note concludes that the legislative history of the 1976 Act indicates that that legislation's drafters envisioned a far more prominent role for the process-expression dichotomy than it has played to date. The process inquiry is at least as important as the idea inquiry in striking the proper balance between promoting progress in the computer art, by granting incentives to create, and impairing progress, by limiting access to utilitarian innovations. This Note develops and describes complementary techniques for distinguishing both unprotected idea and unprotected process from protected expression within the context of computer program structure.

Part I of this Note briefly introduces fundamental aspects of the computer art10 and relevant concepts of copyright law to provide a working background for the analysis that follows. Courts have sometimes appeared not to be fully aware of important elements of the computer art and the nature of progress in. that art; this lack of awareness has sometimes operated to the detriment of the goals of copyright law. Part II discusses the threshold question whether copyright protection of a computer program should ever extend beyond the literal instructions of that program to its structure. To determine the proper scope of protection, this Part examines the relevant case law, legislative history, and policy considerations and concludes that established copyright doctrines support some protection for the structures of computer programs. Part III proposes an approach for determining when the copyright in a computer program has been infringed by the copying of its structure and describes the use of this approach. within a conventional copyright infringement analysis. This approach differs from existing attempts to address the issue in two ways. First, it gives full effect to both the idea-expression and process-expression dichotomies. Second, it adheres more closely to traditional copyright doctrine than existing approaches. This Note's approach seeks properly to balance the goal of promoting progress in the computer art by providing an incentive to create new programs with the fear of impairing progress in that art by allowing monopolization of ideas or processes.

As it is well known, Alternate Reality The City is one of the heaviest copy protected titles for the Atari 8-bits. At the hardware side of the protection, it was one of the first titles that had weak bits. It has several sectors of weak bits on the same track. It is rather unique in that it combines both duplicate sectors and sectors with weak bits (it has dups of weak sectors). It is very strict when it checks the extent of the weak bits in the sector. And it has other, more common, protections as well. Philip Price at his best

Recently we found that there is a version that doesn't have any weak bits at all. The track with the weak bits is identical except that the sectors instead of weak bits they are "stable" with a "normal" CRC error. As if that track would have been copied with something like a Happy that can't reproduce weak bits. The rest of the protection was not altered. My initial reaction was that it was either a duplication defect or a hacked version. But now we found multiple copies of this version, they all match and are identical. That would mean it is very unlikely it is a hack. And the code was altered to ignore the result of the protection checking for the weak bits. Or at least it seems so. That would discard a mastering or duplication defect. The check for the "common" protection remains. It is still copy protected.

Regardless it would be important if we can confirm that this version works correctly. Unfortunately it is very difficult for this type of games. If somebody very familiar with this game would like to test it, please let me know and I'll send you images of this version.

Atari games probably more than most were cracked before being widely distributed since by default and unlike the C64, A2 and many others, almost all protection schemes couldn't be dupilcated on a standard drive.

I remember getting Great American Cross Country Road Race to work using a standard drive with no crack. The game attempts to read a high sector and only cares that an error is returned, no other sectors on that track are accessed, and no sector after it on the disk. So I copied it by just partly formatting a disk (eject at the right time) then copying the used portion to the blank.

Hello, Many of the games released in the early 1980s had two versions. The first version was mostly secured using a synchronous format + double sectors on a synchronously formatted track or CRC, DDM sectors on a synchronous track. The second version of the games after about a year, sometimes two, were released and saved with 34 sector protection on the track. I have several original games, mainly from Electronic Arts, in two versions, sometimes the floppy disk envelopes have a different color and sometimes the stickers on the floppy disk have a different color. When you try to copy, you will find out what version you have (program or game release). The first types of protection were copied by Happy Warpy, Speedy 1050, Super Archivery versions 1 and 2, Toms Multi Drive both in Atari 1050 Toms Multi Drive disk drives and in CA 2001 and LDW 2000 drives. The second version of protection is only copied by Super Archiver 1 and 2 with the module Bit Writer. The game released in 2 versions is definitely Seven Cities of Gold, One on One, I don't remember if I have M.U.L.E. in 2 versions, but this is an explanation of the differences why some games can be copied and others cannot. Moreover, it is of course possible that someone partially cracked the game by changing security procedures, but if someone pirated it, they almost always broke all security measures and did not leave them for dessert. There is also an option used only in Happy Warp 1050. You can make a copy of the game, the copy has no protection, appropriate software (PDB files by programming the Atari 1050 station with the Happy Warp modification) so that after restarting the computer, the copy of the game loads only with the Happy modification. This greatly limited the making of pirated copies and allowed for making a copy for playing for a person who had the original program/game (saving the original medium). The perfect solution to limit the circulation of pirates. I know that Happy used to be very popular in the US, so it wasn't fully respected. However, even fewer people had the knowledge and money for a Super Archiver with Bit Writer to be able to create bit copies of games and programs using an Atari 1050 station.

"The publisher called me a few months after release and said (1 they messed up on writing the weak bits on the disk and instead of writing them in the middle of the area that I allowed, they wrote it on the edge, thereby aggravating any manufacturing errors they might have), and then they ask me to send a few copies with my protection defeated (Because they had a few important buyers whose Ataris could not work with the protected version), so I said sure I can do it, I disabled it and sent the publisher a copy [and I always wonder if that was the first one pirated]"

What you describe are the two copy protections used by Electronic Arts, usually called Skew Align and Supertrack. The only actual title we know that was released with both protections is Seven Cities of Gold. Electronic Arts changed the protection at some point, and probably Seven Cities was released just about that time. We checked many copies of both MULE and One on One, and all copies we seen had the same protection. MULE always the older one, and One on One always the newer one. If they were released with the "other" protection, then that particular release is pretty rare because we never found it.