California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law that won’t stop companies from taking away your digitally purchased video games, movies, and TV shows, but it’ll at least force them to be a little more transparent about it.
As spotted by The Verge, the law, AB 2426, will prohibit storefronts from using the words “buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good or alongside an option for a time-limited rental.” The law won’t apply to storefronts which state in “plain language” that you’re actually just licensing the digital content and that license could expire at any time, or to products that can be permanently downloaded.
The law will go into effect next year, and companies who violate the terms could be hit with a false advertising fine. It also applies to e-books, music, and other forms of digital media.
Fun Fact: If you as an individual bought a game, made a copy, and gave it away then you have done nothing wrong.
Also, downloading an “illegal copy” for yourself is also legal. You have not distributed another person’s IP for profit, there are no laws against what you did.
If you sold the copy it would be illegal. If you gave away 500 copies it would be illegal. But creating and sharing a backup is fine.
You are for sure violating the copyright law by doing so. You have the right to make backups for personal archival but not to distribute. The second you share with someone else you are breaking copyright law.
In the USA, Copyright Infringement excludes nonprofit uses, but that becomes shaky very quickly when you run a network that distributes copyrighted work without permission because you are then harming the business that sells the items.
So, yes, you can distribute a copy to your friend and your friend can take said copy and no laws are broken.