CDRinfo has this story today :

http://www.cdrinfo.com//Sections/New...RelatedID=3975


Ending era for CloneCD?
Monday, 21 July 2003

According to CloneCD team, from August 2003 the legendary CloneCD program will be illegal in Germany due to new copyright laws. Other European countries will follow the Germany's laws and thus Elaborate Bytes are forced to discontinue the development of its software, in order to avoid prosecution.
CloneCD 4.2.0.2. Will be the last version of this copy software. According to the company. “.. Although Elaborate Bytes has moved to Switzerland, but we don't know by now whether we will be safe from organizations like RIAA, MPAA, GEMA.."

Today CloneCD is, -in the way it is now-, illegal in Germany, Austria, Italy, France and UK (?), if the new EU right is passing the parliaments. So the company stopped producing the Box Version in May 2003 and hopes to hold an online version that will be located in Switzerland.

“.. A lot of persons think that the EU law can't get us for CCD, because our main office is located in Switzerland, but that is wrong: there are some special agreements between the EU and Switzerland that allow to get the CloneCD author (Oliver), or the Elaborate Bytes AG (that have all rights on CCD) "judged" by EU laws, even Oliver would live in Switzerland or somewhere else in the EU. However, Oliver and the head of the ELBY AG don't want to go to jail.."

The situation was already known a couple of months ago. In that moment the "new" law had just passed the German parliament, and Elaborate Bytes had to stop selling and developing CloneCD and Virtual CloneDrive from Germany; or try to make it "legal" again.

That means if the user is located in EU/UK/US/JP, he cannot copy ANY protected Audio- or GameCD. (If you move with your PC to Switzerland, you can do it further on, or just look for a *patch* in the web, to get the hole functions of CloneCD.)

The new copyright laws will possibly influence other relative software packages available in the market. VSO (located in France) and some others (i.e.: S.A.D., CDRwin) will be illegal as well.

Alcohol-Soft is developed by DaemonTools teamed up together with a Chinese company (FantonCD), but the whole selling and official developing is located in China/Taiwan. It is not clear whether the EU/UK/US laws will also affect them.



So now your backup-copies becomes illegal and people in EU using CloneCD will be prosecuted for their criminal intent of having a working legitimate backup-copy ?
Who said : Copyprotection is illegal ! I agree , that it's a crime against personal freedom and democracy ! Inform the public about the witchhunting / bookburning / informationsuppression !!!

++++++++++++ CloneCD lives in our hearts . ^^

I would like to suggest to keep all the newsinfo regarding cdrinfo.com's news about the end of clonecd in this thread.