my disk freezes now...

Is there anyway to get another disk from Firaxis? I'm not going to spend the money to buy it again but I really want to play...especially with the new patch coming out. The disk looks perfectly clean except the middle of it(the part just around the hole in middle) looks like it got engraved by the laser or something. I didn't think data was held there but maybe it is. The disk plays fine for a bit but then freezes.

Any ideas what I can do?

Use a no-cd patch. You can find one with google in about 2 seconds

Are these legal to use though or are they non-legit?

I don't want to use something only to find that I can't patch anymore.

You'll probably need to wait for an updated no-cd patch for the next patch. You could find a virtual image of the CD and mount it with daemontools or something.

It's not illegal. It's only illegal if you use such tools to play the game without buying it.