I wonder if this were actually play out in a fair court wouldn't it be theft? At least in the US if I were to legally purchase the old game and create a patch for it to remove the DRM that's something I'm allowed to do. At which point I'd have a totally legal copyrighted work I could distribute. The crime isn't until someone uses it to patch an illegally owned copy of the game. So now Rockstar is stealing someone else's copyrighted work and distributing it?
I'm not a lawyer and have no idea if this applies to all civil torts, but there's something called a "clean hands doctrine" where you cannot sue for damages related to something you illegitimately gained in the first place. Brave Search gave me this:
The doctrine protects the integrity of a court and is used in U.S. patent law to deny equitable or legal relief to a patentee that has engaged in improper conduct, such as using the patent to extend monopoly power beyond the claims of the patent.
That said, I'm also fairly certain that removing DRM, legally or not, on a game you own does not make the resulting patched copy your own copyrighted work.
I wonder if this were actually play out in a fair court wouldn't it be theft? At least in the US if I were to legally purchase the old game and create a patch for it to remove the DRM that's something I'm allowed to do. At which point I'd have a totally legal copyrighted work I could distribute. The crime isn't until someone uses it to patch an illegally owned copy of the game. So now Rockstar is stealing someone else's copyrighted work and distributing it?
I'm not a lawyer and have no idea if this applies to all civil torts, but there's something called a "clean hands doctrine" where you cannot sue for damages related to something you illegitimately gained in the first place. Brave Search gave me this:
That said, I'm also fairly certain that removing DRM, legally or not, on a game you own does not make the resulting patched copy your own copyrighted work.
Yeah, Rockstar could argue that them using stolen code from crackers falls under fair use/public domain because the crackers are a rogue entity.