Just changing 1 byte (or supplying this information in any kind of way - text, patch or whatever) is already illegal under US DMCA & will be illegal in most eu countries but is not implemented yet everywhere because of current fair use laws from country to country. Germany is most likely on of the first eu countries implementing this eu law in german law

Sweden law is totally crazy as they have totally thrown out fair use (e.g. backup for own use). You may wander who drafts up these laws...

We know this is a problem for ANY site which is supplying files and/or information... These laws are a bad thing as you can not do anything anymore. Even showing a bloodpatch or whatever on your will be illegal one way or another... And the biggest problem that these law are unstoppable...

And yet again, its not illegal to supply/host tools to enable people/yourself to backup your games, their is no consistancy with these laws.

Therefore hosting/supply of "No-CD patches" (please read the defintion between a "fixed exe" and a no-cd patch in the previous posts) even if they are deemed illegal is not illegal to host them, because they constitute a method of backing up your games, therefore its only actually "illegal" if you are using them.

And the best thing about that is that there is nothing they can do about that law (as in change it, to become illegal to host these no-cd patches") The same goes for "hacking" (computer hackers) tools, its not illegal to supply tools, nor to supply informtation/articles about hacking.

So basically they could theoritically ban these "fixed exes" from being hosted, but not no-cd patches, as they dont contain any of the games code or coding.

Therefore I would not fear the no-cd patch side of things, but just maybe "fixed exe" files.

But I do see where you are coming from Tippex in a way.

Hey guys, if there _really_ is a difference between no-CD patches and no-CD patched EXE's then "all" we gotta do is change the packaging of no-CD patches.

Rather than supplying an already hacked EXE, packages should contain (the download location of) the hacking tool(s) (the more automated, the better) and a short description on what to do. Then everyone would be able to hack his or her own copy of the program. No original program code included!

This, mostly, depends on the large cracking groups, though, as they're not willing to publish their hacking tools: decryptors, unwrappers, decompressors, process dumpers etc... Which is quite understandable, knowing that the published tools may help companies create even nastier copy protections... ;)

Joe

Well actually, its not that hard at all to create No-CD patches from already "cracked" executables, there are many tools out the which will allow you to make a patch from an already cracked executable (one with the protection removed and/or cd checks), the sole purpose of these "patchers" is to make the game cracks into seperate, stand-alone patches much smaller in size (than the cracked exectable), in the area of of small kb size patches. They work by scanning the executables and find where the jumps etc. have been changed or moved, then creates a new seperate stand alone patch and writes these "byte batterns" into the patch. When the patch is run on an orignal exe file it changes these jumps.

I know FBSA does this, all you need is one of the cracks, and bobs your uncle, you can make a stand alone no-cd patch. Just get one of Deviances, Fairlights, GimpsRUS, Drunk etc. crack releases and use them as you base, then run the patching program, repack the no-cd patch with an .nfo file and submit it to all the sites.

Btw, spielebrennen offers any type of crack no more.
The reason was already mentioned above (new German law), but imho the admins are just scared...well, I would be so, too, if I was them ;)

AFAIK, the law affects mainly music and movie mediums...

@ viperspit01

I would gladly go back to a patch only system as this would save us A LOT OF BANDWIDTH as patches are about 100-1000x smaller than an executable... the good old days ;)

But as Joe Forster/STA already tells you that most of the current protections (SD/SD2/SR) use an encrypted EXE. To decrypte them you'll need a unwrapper. As these are just not available for every version of the protection, it is impossible to do this yourself! That is why there are Fixed EXE's and not just (smaller) patches. If you would create a patch, by comparing the original EXE and decrypted EXE then the patch will be bigger than the orginal EXE (as the files are just too different), so this is useless. Most likely you did not try this yourself ;)

FBSA only makes patches for games which are protected with a CD-Check (these executables are usually NOT encrypted). If they have a patch for an encrypted EXE then they always tell you to get the decrypted EXE first.

EMPiRE,

Yeah I do realise this, and that is why often you will see with some of the No-CD patches that they are accompanied by the "Fixed Exe" and also the much smaller patch, the patch obviously removes the CD Check from the Fixed Exe, which most crackers don't remove, as there is not need to if you going to use one of thier ISO or "Warez" releases.

But if you were to make available these No-CD patches, then the people can still use them, all they need to do is find the Fixed Exe (if you know where to look you can find them) then all they need to do is download the no-cd patch from GCW then find the Fixed Exe from somewhere else....and in the nfo file all you need to put is just for them to find the fixed exe release and run the patch, this would avid your site hsoting any of the fixed exe's which may contain some of the games code.

This may have to be the method for the furture for sites like GCW and alike. To have the No-CD patch bigger than the fixed exe or original exe is better than having no no-cd patch at all. And best of all the No-CD patch wouldn't contain any of the games code or coding, which is perfectly legal in USA, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Spain, France Russia, China, Japan and many more other contries. (Im pretty sure some countries in Europe, especially those who are members of the European Union (the Euros currency and all) aren't allowed to backup any of their games or software (which someone has already mentioned) in any shape of form, which is just crazy.

But in regards to the No-cd patches, I doubt any of the crackers (major ones anyhow) will make no-cd patches for thier releases instead of "fixed exe's", so its left to just the people who submit files to GCW to do this.