Greetings,

I am dead set on supporting GOG.com (Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginela...) and would never consider sharing games I have purchased and downloaded from here. However I would like to be able to help a friend or two in keeping their bandwidth usage low (where I live bandwidth is still limited and offered at a premium price) by sharing some parts of large download size titles (Witcher 1/2 begin one such example).

So what I would like to know is this....

Is it all right to give a friend .bin files (which would save them say 10GB downloads) and then simply instruct them to purchase the title and download the final portion of the offering directly themselves, the one that includes the .exe setup file?

Furthermore, while I am aware that the titles are DRM free and I certainly do not intend to share any product keys issued (as it is the case of Witcher 2) I am wondering if the .bin files are personally tagged (with my username, product key or otherwise) in any way or form (something similar to watermarks on purchased PDF documents).

I appriciate your reply.
Kind Regards
Daniel

Not sure where it stands legally but morally I say go ahead and do it. They can't play the games without the setup.exe. So your not giving them to your friends for free. The bin files are all the same so you don't need to worry about them getting your cd copy of the game.

From a moral standpoint you're fine.

From a legal standpoint you're also fine, assuming they did purchase the game from GOG as well.

Keep in mind you aren't technically purchasing the 1's and 0's that you download but a license to use said 1's and 0's. Besides you're just trying to save bandwidth, and that's yours and GOG's.

I'm not sure how it will work with the Witcher 2 and the downloader, but you can just copy over the bin files for Witcher 1 at least.

Copying copyrighted material is illegal.

GOG games are DRM free.

These are the only two things you need to know. The rest is up to you.

Have the original setup files been removed from the CD images?

True, but lending a game or CD to your friend is also illegal under the same law.

BZZZZZZTTT! wrong sorry UK law is a bitch technically you can't even put a painting on display where the public will see it in this country unless its out of copyright or you have the artists written permission.. Hell time shifting is still technically illegal in the UK it's just the copyright holders look the other way.

Though how someone can say the UK has bandwidth restrictions when Sky will do unlimited for under £15 as will BT and others if they want your custom...

Perhaps they live in a rural area and do not have access to metro-comparable service and have to rely on wireless or what have you, as i do.

Copying copyrighted material is illegal.

GOG games are DRM free.

I may be wrong, I admit, but bearing in mind how tiny the UK is, that's not that likely. You either have broadband coverage or you don't, what tends to get affected is your maximum speed. To put it into context in a slightly unrelated way, you're never more than 70 miles from the sea in the UK - when you consider that almost the whole middle area is city and the SE is the London metropolitan area (about 50 miles by 50 miles) you can't get that far away from a city or large town in the UK.

Even in the highlands of scotland coverage is 98% for wired bb. The only thing I can think of is they use cable and don't want to pay virgins stupidly high costs

DRM isn't just another word for copyrighted. A console game or music CD are also DRM free and it's still technically illegal to lend them to a friend. Just one of those crazy laws that you can only assume has some obscure meaning beyond simply punishing me for letting my friend borrow a game for a few days.

Yeah, technically neither are "unlimited". they have soft-caps (BT's "Unlimited Downloads!" is 100GB per month) after which, they degrade your speed during peak hours : ~1700 - ~0100. Also, they degrade certain ports (P2P, for example) as standard, during these hours, anyway :\