Question about D2 Loader

[NkToth]

But that brings me to an interesting point I was pondering just the other day...  If you can legally have a back-up copy of media for personal use, such as movies and music, wouldn't this extend to video games?  And if this were so, wouldn't it be illegal to require the use of the CD in the CD-Drive to play the game, since any copies would then be rendered useless without the original CD in the drive, thus making copies for personal use useless?  I'm not sure of the law in the area, but it seems like it could be argued in court in favor of the user, IMO.

Because you are only licensed to use software - you do not own it. When you click the install agreement buried in there is the 'I will not copy or alter this program'. Whatever the good or bad consequences of this are, it is necessary in some form. If you owned the software, you could alter it and give it away all you liked - much like you could with a desk or a car. The fact that you can do this multiple times is where the trouble comes from - through both ignorance and malice, rampant software copying (and now music copying) has gone on, and corporations have become draconian in response to it. So when you click through you agree to whatever terms they've set - whether it's using CD's, no backups, or even that they're allowed to search your computer and disable software/music they don't think you have the rights to (Not Blizzard per se, but this part of the plan with Paladium that would be available to any software/music provider).

As for this specific program, I think Blizzard would disable it if they recognize it since it makes it possible to not even have the CD. I'm not familiar enough with it to know for certain, though. I have heard of the possibility of storing an image of the CD and mounting that, and getting the system to use that, which might be harder to detect. (If this is what it does, than someone please clarify.)

As for if this is a "cheat", I'd say no - it doesn't give an advantage so much as it might remove a possible disadvantage by ensuring a proper playing speed. (Again, if I understand it correctly.)