Sad state of the gaming industry...

[Jarulf]

Technically this may be true, but AFAIK in Germany this case does fall under the new regulation. Or, that is my understanding of the formulation in the new German 'Urheberrecht': 'wirksame technische Maßnahme zum Schutz eines urheberrechtlich geschützten Werkes' ('efficient technical measures for the protection of a copyrighted product'). Nothing in the German law seems to indicate that there is any difference between a copy protection and an access protection. I am not a lawyer, though. Also, it may very well be that the final decision about which cases are affected by the new law and which are not has to be made by the courts.
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Hmm, be sure to check out what it is actually saying though. If I recall correctly, the directive is about circumvention of effective protection of rights the copyright holder has. Copying is such a right. Use or access is not. Each country implementing the directive can of course chose to add additional types of protections one can't circumvent. I have no idea about the German laws though. If one look at the US law (the DMCA) and compare it to the old copyright law, they basically list all the exact same rights BUT they allso add access (I think it is access, but did not go and check). SO even if not given as an exclusive right to the copyright holder, the circumvention of such an additional thing, do in effect give the copyright holder such an extra "right" sort of. Which is in my opinion one of the really bad things about the DMCA (and other similar such laws doing the same thing).