Here's what seems to have worked for me.

Go to your "Program Files (x86)" folder and find the "BoneTown" folder. Right-click it and select "properties". If the folder has "read only" highlighted, uncheck it and hit "apply". You should be prompted to apply it to just that folder, or all subfolders. I chose all subfolders. Now it gets past that point in the game.

It makes no sense that the game folders should be read-only. I don't know why it installed this way from a download version. The game needs to write save files and such.