First off, the purpose of this is Not to discuss or ask for ways of removing or bypassing copy-protection schemes for this game or others. Rather, I wanted to get some possible feedback about the legal issues surrounding this.

As we all know by now, the EULA for this game (as well as certain US copyright laws, I believe) Does in theory allow the user to make a legal backup for personal use, provided such backup not be distributed to any third parties or otherwise used criminally. However, the CD's themselves implement a copy-protection scheme which prohibits the user from doing just that.

My question would be, does anyone know of any legal precedents for this, either for or against such a move? This post isnt a complain, rather I simply wish to better understand the situation, and whether such applications have analogies in other fields.

Never heard of it, one way or the other.

It used to be, back in the floppy install days, you could make one backup, and the original disks would have a program to make sure it was just the one backup being made. With CDs it's harder, as CD means 'read-only'. Okay, not really, but you get my point.

With CD-RW drives being more and more common, perhaps in the future this feature will come back.

I wonder what the company (any, not just atari) would say if you emailed them and said that you want your backup per the EULA, now how do I get it?

The floppy issue reminds me of some software packages I use at work. The software itself comes on normal CD's which can easily be copied, however the program itself will not work unless you purchase a (very expensive, in this case) license from the company. You receive a special floppy disk containing a license file that has to be transferred your computer. I am assuming the contents of the disk contain some implementation of copy protection, as it can only be used on one computer at a time, though when needed, it can be taken from the computer, resotred to the disk, and transferred again.

Perhaps for game use, companies like Atari and others could ship normal, copyable cd's, but merely make the special licenses protected. In the event of losing a disk or whatnot, you could request a new one with sufficient proof of purchase, either deliverable by mail or through an internet connection.

As with all other methods, I'm sure this can be circumvented by clever persons, but at least this method would allow honest customers to make backups of their cd copies.

Of course this also brings up the issues of backing up your lisence file or disk as well, which may make this whole idea rather redundant.