I kind of wonder how pirating a game I have a legal license to would work in court. For example, let’s say a studio dropped support for a game’s DRM without stripping the DRM first. I still have a legal license to the game, I just can’t play it because of a technical limitation.
If I download a version with the DRM stripped, did I break the law? The person who stripped the DRM violated the DMCA, and they didn’t have the right to redistribute it, but I have to legal right to have access to it so possession probably isn’t illegal. AFAIK, copyright protects the work I bought a license to, and AFAIK, a license doesn’t necessarily include the DRM protections (studios can strip that without renegotiating the license).
So I think there’s a sufficient gray area where legal piracy could exist. As in, I downloaded content from someone who pirated it illegally, but I have a legal right to the content so my actions were legal.
Technically https://www.myabandonware.com/ should be legal, most games there you can’t get anywhere else so even if you wanted to give money to the people who made them you couldn’t. E.g. I found that website trying to buy The Sims 1, I used to have the cds a long time ago, but I thought it would be easier to just buy it again from GoG or something, but it’s not available to buy anywhere so it’s a hard for a company to claim you’re harming their sells if they’re not selling the product.
Now that that’s settled, where to get legally pirated games?
I kind of wonder how pirating a game I have a legal license to would work in court. For example, let’s say a studio dropped support for a game’s DRM without stripping the DRM first. I still have a legal license to the game, I just can’t play it because of a technical limitation.
If I download a version with the DRM stripped, did I break the law? The person who stripped the DRM violated the DMCA, and they didn’t have the right to redistribute it, but I have to legal right to have access to it so possession probably isn’t illegal. AFAIK, copyright protects the work I bought a license to, and AFAIK, a license doesn’t necessarily include the DRM protections (studios can strip that without renegotiating the license).
So I think there’s a sufficient gray area where legal piracy could exist. As in, I downloaded content from someone who pirated it illegally, but I have a legal right to the content so my actions were legal.
Technically https://www.myabandonware.com/ should be legal, most games there you can’t get anywhere else so even if you wanted to give money to the people who made them you couldn’t. E.g. I found that website trying to buy The Sims 1, I used to have the cds a long time ago, but I thought it would be easier to just buy it again from GoG or something, but it’s not available to buy anywhere so it’s a hard for a company to claim you’re harming their sells if they’re not selling the product.