Basically they copied work of someone other, removed any info about who made that program, and added it into SW they sold. In addition that program is necessary for using the sold SW.
If this isn't illegal, then you would need to work hard to find something that is. Torrents and massive noncommercial piracy is completely irelevant in comparison to this.
reaven said:
If they release a non legally modified exe they are exposed to get his work copied by other looking to get the same result (other cracker or in this case gog) and they cant do anything.
GoG did nothing wrong as they copied something that is not protected by any means. Would have been more ethical that they mentioned the source of exe? Yeah sure, but I guess they though that nobody would give a fuck, but there was Droog with thirst for drama...
You fail to understand the problem. The problem isn't they redistributed crack without permission of authors of crack. According to traditions and customs in SW industry, cracks are supposed to be copied freely, only theirs sale is strictly forbidden. (Mafia can ring, drag you out, and beat the crap out of you level of forbidden.)
They removed information from the program, and pretended it's theirs work. That's a felony. If they explicitly stated they are using crack for running the program, and thanked the group that created the crack I doubt they would have problem with that. However it would create interesting law problem. Politicians and lawyers didn't have actual experience, and made laws which actually allows to sue and jail anyone.
starfish said:
Anybody know if there's any truth to this? I've used quite a few cracks in my time, some of which did get detected as trojans by AVG/Norton. I also have both a software and hardware firewall; no supposed trojan I've ever installed has ever tried to phone home (from what I can tell).
They would integrate with your browser, which means they would use your browser permissions. Firewall will not be able find them.
Also cracks might like to use memory patching, which looks like a virus attack. In addition people who are able to break securom protection, are able to use the same methodology to hide malicious code.
The simplest way how to activate a hidden malicious code is to look at the serial number. A legal serial number would activate malicious code (with a delay so the user would be unaware why that happened), a blocked serial number would activate copy protection bypass.
Translated use cracks from trusted groups.