As a friendly reminder, discussion of stealing copyrighted material (i.e., piracy) is against the Overclock.Net terms of service. What constitutes "piracy" may not be clear to everyone; but from this site's perspective, the line is very clear: anything that is a violation of the law, whether you believe that the law if just, fair, or whatever, is a violation of the ToS.
There was a thread in the Windows forum a few months ago that gave some specific examples of what is considered piracy. I encourage everyone to read that thread. For convenience's sake, I have also lifted and slightly modified BFRD's examples from that post, putting a slight gaming-specific perspective where appropriate.
A non-exhaustive list of things that should not be discussed:
There was a thread in the Windows forum a few months ago that gave some specific examples of what is considered piracy. I encourage everyone to read that thread. For convenience's sake, I have also lifted and slightly modified BFRD's examples from that post, putting a slight gaming-specific perspective where appropriate.
A non-exhaustive list of things that should not be discussed:
- Any software that disables copy protection and/or disc encryption. This includes any sort of no-cd or other crack program for games and DVD copying software. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 2001 explicitly outlaws these types of programs.
- Any discussion of software that invalidates Shareware/Trialware restrictions.
- Offering to PM a member a serial number or crack, or asking for same.
- Any unauthorized use of corporate software.
- Using BitTorrent or other P2P networks to optain copyrighted software, music, movies, etc.
- Downloading any copyrighted media (games, music, movies, whatever) without the artist's permission.
- It includes game ROMs used by emulators, downloading ROMs over the internet is illegal. Note however that the emulators themselves are perfectly legal, since they are independently developed software. So you can talk about emulators, just don't talk about acquiring ROMs.
- It also includes old games. There is no legal concept of "abandonware" despite what you may have seen on web sites devoted to the subject. Unless the original copyright holder explicitly permits redistribution of the old software as "freeware" or, less likely, public domain software, then it remains subject to copyright law.









