It's Now Legal to Crack Your PC Games

[Stephen!]

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) got a big revision today that will likely change the way that users may lawfully use and enjoy the products and media that they own.

Today the Librarian of Congress announced DMCA Section 1201, which adds six provisions whereby "persons who circumvent access controls in order to engage in noninfringing uses of works in these six classes will not be subject to the statutory prohibition against circumvention."

Essentially, it comes down to this:

People may now rip DVDs to show clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos.
People may now legally jailbreak their iPhones and root their Android phones without fear that a corporation will rain down upon them.
People may now legally unlock their cell phones.
(These first three are mostly the result of lobbying from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
People may now circumvent the copy protection of PC and video games for investigative reasons. This should be a great thing for PC gamers sick of dealing with the DRM of the games they legally purchased.
People may now get past software that's protected by an outdated hardware dongle.
People may now break past ebooks that don't allow the text to be read aloud.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/drm-dmca-jailbreaking-unlocking-iphone,10944.html

[hamheyelliot]

I don't think their DMCA law applies to the UK, so bit of a shame really.

[Stephen!]

Really? Damn. I hope this catches on though to whatever governs our copyright laws.

[Pyroka]

Really? Damn. I hope this catches on though to whatever governs our copyright laws.

european union lol.

[hamheyelliot]

Really? Damn. I hope this catches on though to whatever governs our copyright laws.
Well I think we have some form of DMCA, but it's seperate to the US one- as Tom's Hardware is a US site I figured it hasn't reached us yet :(

[Stephen!]

We can only hope... I think that legally jailbreaking iPhones would be popular :P

[Recursion]

We can only hope... I think that legally jailbreaking iPhones would be popular :P

I assumed since Apple is a US company, they fell under the same "jailbreaking is cool yo" laws.

[GommeInc]

Meh, as far as I see it, once you own the game it's yours to do with whatever you please. You can crack your own game etc etc. Like changing the layout of a desk you bought from Staples. This is fine. It's only when you start doing it for others, or distributing the cracks that may be a problem, but it depends what the crack does :/