Submitting a review for consideration is easy; please first read Slashdot's book review guidelines. Updated: 2008114 by samzenpus
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.
Of course the installer must leave something (Score:3, Insightful)
If uninstalling the free trial would leave your computer in exactly the same state as before, then nothing could stop you from free trying again.
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that's really a great defense. If I uninstall software, I don't expected phantom memory use by something I'm not using anymore.
I know it's not realistic, but it doesn't change that uninstalled programs should not leave shit all over my hard drive.
Parent
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention as a PC repairman I have seen that these kinds of DRM can cause serious problems and even hardware damage. I've seen PCs that you couldn't burn anything with because the DRM would screw up the burn every time, I've replaced both DVD and CD burners because the DRM would throw them into PIO mode and burn them out,weird lockups and crashes of the entire system that magically disappear when they DRM infection was removed,etc.
Now I had no problem with the "you have to keep the CD in the drive" old school DRM. It was irritating but was easy enough to get around with a noCD and still kept Joe Average from just hitting copy in Nero. But today's DRM is just too damned nasty,and has more in common with virus infections that legitimate software. It hides from the user,it makes itself a royal PITA to get rid of,and it causes all kinds of PC screwups that are damned hard to track down. Actually I'd say some of the newer trojans actually behave better than the new Starforce and SecuROM infections,since they leach off the bandwidth without causing all kinds of errors.
It has gotten bad enough that when a customer brings in a PC for cleaning and repair I look for SecuROM and Starforce just like I look for worms and trojans. Because the "virus free" computers that are brought to me because they are screwing up always seem to have either SecuROM or Starforce on them,and its removal makes the problems go away. They are just going to have to face the fact that like Apple's iTunes DRM,the best you can do without boning your customers is stop the casual pirates. Because this new DRM infection only screws your paying customers and as we saw with Spore the pirates had their copy before it was even released.
And while I love MoH and C&C I simply won't be giving EA another dime of my hard earned money until they get rid of the infections on their products. My gaming PC runs quite stable and well and I have no intention of breaking it just for the privilege of giving EA $60. Sorry C&C and MoH developers,but you lost a long time fan and paying customer thanks to the viruses installed in your games by EA.
Parent
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference between leaving "hey, I was here before" traces, and actual executables that continue to load and run on a machine.
Parent
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:5, Insightful)
One continues to affect your computer's operation while the other does not.
Parent
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:4, Insightful)
Just off the top of my head...
Make the trial phone home with a hash of the hardware specs on install or run. Invalidate the hash once the trial is up. Yeah, phone-homes are a pain, but I'm only talking about the trial version, here.
You could key the specific installation with a time-based or otherwise random method, and key the save-game or data files to it (you would have something like Maya's solution, where trial-mode saves wouldn't be usable on the purchased version). You could reinstall the game as much as you wanted, but you'd have to start from scratch.
Parent
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine, but they need to ask permission before making a change that can only be backed out by reformatting your HD. Either that, or PAY for you to have your machine reformatted and re-installed with everything but their steaming pile.
Parent
Should not have to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should I have to run Deep Freeze, or any type of software to return my system to a state before a program is installed?
Unless I give explicit permission for a program install something, then it should not be installed.
How is EA doing this different from anyone installing trojans, spyware, or virus?
Parent
Re:Should not have to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Should not have to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Should not have to. (Score:4, Informative)
How about you RTFA, or even the summary?
"EA's EULA for Spore Creature Creator Free Trial Edition makes utterly no mention of any Technical Protection Measures, DRM technology, or SecuROM whatsoever."
It was not in the EULA, so EA has installed software on the users computer without the users knowledge.
Parent
No. That's not right... (Score:5, Informative)
Their EULA says nothing about installing hidden software that will never be removed.
Even by agreeing to the EULA you don't agree to "all things not mentioned."
If so where would it end? Could they search my harddrive for credit card information? Format my harddrive on a whim? Store their own stuff on my computer without telling me? Of course not!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:5, Informative)
It might sound like a dumb idea and has no reason (there is no disc to authenticate with), but the DRM is present in demo versions only because crackers used to use demos to crack the retail versions of the games. They were a good starting point (especially with StarForce games) as most of the code to start the game was EXACTLY the same as what would appear in the retail version if it had not a copy protection placed on it.
Parent
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:4, Interesting)
I said the demos that were left unprotected were a good starting point for crackers. You are right in saying the retail versions have cracked executables too, because no copy protection is going to stop these motivated crackers. I recall that Splinter Cell Double Agent was protected with StarForce (the worst yet of all the copy protections). A real proper crack did not come out till 1 year later. That is some serious devotion.
SecuROM and SafeDisc have existed for a very long time. The first SecuROM game I ever got was Diablo II. Once CloneCD came out and 1:1 copied CDs were possible, that and SafeDisc (of the time) were broken. Beyond that, cracked EXEs still existed (and I tended to use these anyway, sped up loading time and still do quite often). SecuROM of that time was quite simple, relying upon subchannel data (similar to PSX's copy protection that came along later) for a checksum, of which Data CD copiers at the time did NOT read at all (like Easy CD Creator of the time, which came with my first burner). SafeDisc did nearly the same thing, except with corrupted data, similar to their CSS protection; files on the disc were placed but were also corrupted data (and possibly encrypted) that drives could read but no general user programs would ever read properly to a hard drive or to an ISO image (not even Nero). If I took a disc like that and used dd to copy it, dd would fail upon seeing those sectors even on a completely clean CD. CloneCD started the whole 1:1 copy 'revolution' (which has led to Alcohol 120%, AnyDVD, and other products) and made it possible to copy these CDs up until SecuROM and SafeDisc both got major security upgrades to the point where it is now, you might as well (a have the real disc or b) use a crack.
For some reason, although many games used the disc ONLY to check for a real disc and did not read any data from it like older games would (what ever happened to leaving the FMVs on the disc? No I don't have 9 GB to spare for EVERY game, sorry!), this did not stir up any controversy. People were only beginning to get CD burners (they were also slow), media was not nearly as cheap as it is now, many people still had 56k so downloading ISO's was unheard of, and a number of other factors kept CD copy protection information in the dark to most consumers.
The real controversy started with StarForce by the way. I think people seem to have forgotten about this. UbiSoft finally decided to stop using it after much consumer demand, and in general, guess how many games have StarForce now. None that I have heard of recently.
I am a consumer of PC games but I wonder for how long because I was perfectly happy buying games and I was glad that cracks worked, even on-line. I was glad that even though there was a stupid copy protection (most people would often not notice their disc is spinning during that Sims screen just for copy protection sectors), I could backup these games in some form. Cracked copy is better than none. Do any company give you a new CD if you scratch yours up? Very few do, and they give you a hard time about it. I remember that enough complaints to Take2 made GTA3 for PC no longer have copy protection (which was SafeDisc, a version that did not work with the current version of CloneCD). Take2 released an update that included bug fixes and no copy protection.
If EA wants to not have complaints about this copy protection other than what it does to Windows, they should preferably drop it altogether, go back to SafeDisc (a much less draconian system), or give people 5 copies for those 5 activations! Legally, due to the DMCA, we cannot even make backups! But EA should not forget about Windows. It sucks, everyone knows, however, Sony, Macrovision and a number of other companies make software for Windows that just makes it slower, could leave it vulnerable to attacks, etc, especially since many are kernel driver-based (SecuROM has been this way since its beginning; StarForce takes this approach; SafeDisc takes this approach in a much more minimalistic way).
I do
Parent
Hugely disappointed with Spore (Score:5, Funny)
What's to stop them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Informative)
IANAL
There is a principle in law that a clause in the contract can not invalidate a law. Also, you cannot waive a fundamental right that is granted by the constitution. To give an (absurd) example...
In a hidden clause of a contract (or EULA) it says that you agree to give up your first born child. If the other party tries to enforce that clause of the contract, the courts would invalidate that clause (and maybe the entire contract).
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Informative)
Unconscionability [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, this is not a contract. Clicking 'I agree' is not a legal way to sign a contract and it is not legal to unilaterally add conditions once a deal is done (once you gave them money, they can't force more conditions on you). They know this, this is why they call it a license. However, a license cannot only grant you rights, it cannot remove them from you.
Hence, EULAs are bogus.
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Interesting)
The courts do not see it that way. I've seen a number of cases were EULA's were deemed valid, I have yet to see one where the EULA was deemed invalid (though parts of it being unconscionable are probably common enough).
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Interesting)
The U.S. District Court of Kansas in Klocek v. Gateway [2000 U.S. Dist. Lexis 9896, 104 F. Supp.3d 1332 (D. Kan., June 16, 2000)] ruled that the contract of sale was complete at the time of the transaction, and that additional terms included in the package did not constitute a contract, because the customer never agreed to them when the contract of sale was completed.
There ya go.
But really the case *I* want to see is one where software installation pops up a click though EULA, the person clicks the EULA's DECLINE button, and then proceeds to complete installing and using the software anyway. It's not particularly hard for a programmer to write a utility to do that.
US law Title 17 Section 117 explicitly states that you need no license whatsoever in order to lawfully install and run software you have bought. So you have explicitly declined their EULA contract offer (which is what an EULA actually is, nothing but a contract offer), and you have perfectly lawfully installed an lawfully use the software. By declining the EULA you receive no license and receive nothing else the contract offers, but generally EULA offer nothing that you want or need.
THAT is the court case I want to see. There is absolutely no legal reason you need to accept an EULAs. You don't need it. It's just that they make it really inconvenient to install it without clicking the agree button. In the case I described they have absolutely no hook available for them to hang a claim of contract acceptance. They sold it to you, you declined the contract, and you perfectly lawfully proceeded to use the software you bought without any contract and without any license.
Actually I believe there is a valid argument that a purely local process of clicking the "accept" button on your own computer and involving no one else and doing nothing you didn't already have the right to do, that that would validly establish a contract either. However that is a far more disputable situation and it seriously has the appearance of accepting a contract. I think judges are going to have a hard time seeing past that appearance of contract and ruling against it unless there is a a clear ruling on my reject-and-install example first. Once it is clear that you *can* legitimately avoid the contract then they will be far more accepting of the legitimacy of other means of avoiding the contract, more accepting of more subtle arguments on what exactly what act does or do not indicate binding acceptance of the EULA contract offer.
-
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:4, Interesting)
But really the case *I* want to see is one where software installation pops up a click though EULA, the person clicks the EULA's DECLINE button, and then proceeds to complete installing and using the software anyway. It's not particularly hard for a programmer to write a utility to do that
Again, in a Devil's advocate mode: What about the DMCA? Wouldn't it apply here? Apparently, it "criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.. It would seem that your method, while completely feasible (and I think reasonable), would possibly fall afoul of this provision as it would be circumventing the access control which prevents install if you click "decline".
Thoughts?
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the DMCA?
Thoughts?
My first thought is to puke.
My second thought is that "click yes to continue" ranks about three levels below ROT13 as a technical protection measure.
The DMCA is a totally incoherent clusterfuck of a law. I have actually read most of the judge rulings on DMCA-circumvention cases, and I don't think any of them have managed a coherent construction of the critical issues. They apparently decided if they like or dislike what you are doing, dodge the undefined aspects, and then conjure some very creative narrow discussion with little connection to anything in the actual law an no connection to anything any of the other judges have ever ruled. If the judge views you as some naughty hacker doing something to annoy wholesome businessmen, then he rules against you. If he decides the businessmen are abusing the DMCA then he makes up some excuse to toss the case.
Some judges would likely be more than willing to hit you with the DMCA in a ROT13 case but I think.... I hope... that few would actually buy into "click YES to continue" as an effective technical protection measure. But yeah, I can definitely see some company pushing that argument. Puke puke puke.
-
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:4, Interesting)
So if I manually extract the files from the installer and add all the registry entries and what not (if I happened to know what they were), such that the application will function perfectly, that means I'm using the software without the EULA even being presented to me. If I was never given a "license" to agree to, how does that stand legally?
I'm sure EA/etc. would make some bogus claim of not being allowed to "reverse engineer", which is rather amusing since that clause is usually in the EULA too.
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some courts have upheld EULAs in the past. In some cases they have even upheld shrinkwrap EULAs that you cannot see until after you have accepted them (where a 'reasonable person' would have expected the clause to be present in the contract). I am not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect the parent poster isn't either and you should think twice about taking his "EULAs are bogus" advice.
Parent
Re:What's to stop them? (Score:5, Informative)
The 7th circuit court of the USA disagrees with you. Click through licenses are valid legal contracts.
Please see ProCD v Zeidenberg [findlaw.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In a hidden clause of a contract (or EULA) it says that you agree to give up your first born child.
Damn, EA is getting tight on those EULAs. Oh well he was a cute little bugger, but he screams and poops a lot and I REALLY want to play Spore. "Hey honey, where's our son at the moment?" ;-)
I prefer another form of protest (Score:5, Insightful)
I've just stopped buying any of their games. Simple yes, but the easiest form of protest, and it works because they are right now down about £200 in lost sales from me.
I don't download them from piracy sites either, I just completely ignore their products.
Re:I prefer another form of protest (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I prefer another form of protest (Score:5, Insightful)
In a similar way, I stopped buying CD's as a protest against the RIAA. I've got over 200 albums on my iPod: no downloads, all imported from CD's I own, of which exactly *one* was bought less than so many years ago.
Some time after I stopped buying, I read that they were suffering from a loss in revenue (not that I think my personal bit was of any visual influence in that), and they were attributing it to piracy. Not to displeased customers like me giving them the middle finger, only to piracy.
So in a way, they were using my protest to "prove" that their actions - the same ones that made me stop buying CD's - were right all along.
Parent
Re:I prefer another form of protest (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I don't think the RA3 devs had ANYTHING to do with the SecuROM crap, yet by not buying their games you essentially cut off their fundings. If the studio disappears because of it, we'll all be crying because yet another good PC developer will have bitten the dust.
Then developers will learn not to work for studios that sign on with distributors that use DRM. Pain is the best teacher.
Parent
Re:So, EA has to do business your way? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't get this attitude. Copyright is a social contract. It isn't part of a capitalist economy. It is defacto a subsidy for production of culture in the form of a government mandated monopoly. In a pure capitalist society you wouldn't have rights to control the replication of bits. Copyright IS by definition a form of socialism.
Here is the deal. We give companies and people a time limited, government mandated monopoly on the reproduction of a good because the cost to develop the good is large and the cost to reproduce it is very small. We throw in a few caveats to try to stop them abusing that monopoly. We do this with a good everyone has a right to have access to (national culture), and in return we expect a few things.
First off, don't abuse the monopoly. You get the financial benefit of a monopoly, that's it. You don't get to screw customers just because you are the only provider of a product. Secondly, respect the social contract. The monopoly is time limited and if you release a product in such a way that you establish a permanent monopoly you are abusing the social contract. DRM does exactly this because it is design to prevent works of art from being copied.
Here EA have basically done both. They have abused the social contract by putting DRM in the product in the first place. Then they have abused the monopoly by essentially infecting machines with a virus. That virus would not be there in a free market environment because competitors to EA would not be stupid enough to put it there.
The rule should be simple. You can have the protection of DRM, or you can have the protection of copyright. But you cant have both because one is a de facto permanent monopoly.
Now I happen to be one of those people who is prepared to put up with a bit of socialism if it increases net societal good. But if EA cant live up the the social contract then their monopoly should be withdrawn. That should be the penalty for abusing what is at the moment a pretty sweet deal (at least for the major content producers). Heck I wish I could still be getting paid for work I did today 100 years from now.
Parent
Re:I prefer another form of protest (Score:4, Insightful)
Frivolous lawsuits are bad, mmmkay?
Suing someone for infesting your computer with hidden irremovable DRM without explicitly saying so hardly sounds frivolous.
I'm usually not a proponent of lawsuits, but in this case, they deserve it. I hope they get to pay a large amount in damages. If you want to hurt your customer, it should come with a hefty price tag.
Parent
Best way to get back at them (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't buy them and don't download them.
Just don't play them at all.
Re:Best way to get back at them (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll just blame their losses on piracy.
Parent
Re:Best way to get back at them (Score:4, Funny)
That's fine. When they can't find anyone to prosecute for downloading and have no money, it really doesn't matter what they blame.
Parent
How to remove that crap? (Score:3, Interesting)
I installed the Creature Creator back when I was still looking forward to Spore, and I was unaware of that the Creature Creator came with that crap too until today.
Does anyone know of a way to remove it?
Re:How to remove that crap? (Score:5, Informative)
Note: This will, of course, stop any SecuROM game from functioning until you reinstall it, and various games may put the actual files in different places....but this should give you a starting point. I haven't actually tried this...although I plan to when I get home tonight. But it looks sane enough to me.
Parent
Re:How to remove that crap? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm having a little difficulty following those directions. I've always considered myself a bit of a computer geek, but they were a bit complex even for me.
Ok... so far I've reflashed my BIOS.... extracted my CPU and located the prime numbered pins and alternatingly wired them to ground and +3.5Vdc then reseated the CPU... then I clipped a wire to the motherboard A20 address line and clipped the other end to my corpus callosum just like you explained...
and that's where I'm stuck. I've still got those electrolytic capacitors shoved up my nose but there are no more free terminals to attach them to on the high voltage winding of the powersupply.
I tried calling EA tech support asking if there was an easier way to remove this SecuROM crap, but they just gave me the same instructions you did.
HELP!!!!1!1111ONE
-
Parent
Re:How to remove that crap? (Score:5, Informative)
I have not tried, but I suppose you can.
But that is not the point. The point is that SecuRom on purpose makes illegal filenames to block normal Windows file commands from working on those files.
Parent
Factual information, please? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone have a solid description of specifically what this form SecuROM "installs", what it does, how it is harmful, and why it can't be removed?
Every time this topic comes up it becomes a "How dare they!" bitchfest so I've never been able to figure out the answers to the above.
I'm not saying that this is definitely just a pile of FUD combined with general anti-corporate hate against EA. But I'm leaning that way without real evidence.
Re:Factual information, please? (Score:5, Informative)
Reading over the legal filing for the creature creator demo, a few very specific complaints are made.
It allegedly disables a number of semi legitimate (Any DVD, Daemon tools), and completely legitimate (Process Manager, Alchohol 120%) software tools. (10 specific programs are named) It also claims that it interferes 'in some circumstances' with having a secondary CD drive (I assume it prevents burning a copy of a CD that's in the other drive), and that all of this occurs whether the demo is running or not.
Looking at the filing, they mention process manager as its own claim, given that this is a legitimate tool used to identify rogue processes, EA can't really claim, (falsely or otherwise) that it is a piracy tool, the way they'll surely claim with the others. AnyDVD is a particularly interesting one as well, since to my knowledge, it only affects movies, and has nothing to do with any EA product at all.
I can't actually say if the claims are correct for the specific version of SecuROM in the demo game, or if a lawyer simply looked at the things SecuROM is known to do and filed those, depends on how bright s/he is I suppose.
Parent
The other complaint (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, looking at the complaint over Sims 2: Bon Voyage, the same allegations of not informing the consumer of SecuROM is made (including not making the user agree to it in the EULA, which is moronic in the extreme in my completely non legal advice opinion, EA may lose this on the basis of having crappy lawyers). In this case, ambiguity as to exactly what SecuROM does is lessened, since the primary plantiff's personal experiences are listed.
Allegedly, backup CDs of other Sims 2 games stopped working. Her USB
What is wrong with EA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is wrong with EA? (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, I support both opinions because I hate DRM. Even the cracked games still run the normal installers which still install SecuROM or SafeDisc or whatever they want to use at any given time.
I have a warezed version of Spore installed, and I don't see any of the SecuROM stuff (reg key, service, system32 file, etc)... so I'm not sure about that.
Parent
Rip 'Em Good (Score:3)
Re:How do you return software? (Score:4, Informative)
This happened to me once- I bought something from Microsoft - same exact situation. I couldn't see the policy until I opened the software, and once I opened the software I couldn't return it even if I disagreed with it and didn't install it. I went to the store and raised a fuss with the manager. First they attempted to tell me that if I didn't agree with the terms I could return it to *Microsoft*. After I kept pushing it (I went to a different store location), the manager there told me that if I didn't agree with the terms I could bring it back to the store. Turns out the terms weren't as onerous as I thought they'd be, so I kept it. But it was nice to know what my options were.
Parent
Re:This ain't going anywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, BULLSHIT.
SecuROM revokes some of your administrator priviledges and disables other legitimate programs on your computer. This is anti-competitive behavior (interfering with other products from other companies/individuals,) and a violation of my property rights. I own this computer, you do not have the right to revoke some of my administrator priviledges and make it to where I cannot delete files from my own goddamned system.
Maybe in YOUR bizarro world this wouldn't go anywhere, but then again facts always fly in the face of the bizarre.
Parent