Two New Class-Action Suits Against EA Over DRM 336
In September, we discussed a class-action suit filed against Electronic Arts over the DRM in Spore. Now, two new class-action suits have been filed that target the SecuROM software included in a free trial of the Spore Creature Creator (PDF) and in The Sims 2: Bon Voyage (PDF). If this sort of legal reprisal continues to catch on, EA could be seeing quite a few class-action suits in the future. One of the suits accuses:
"The inclusion of undisclosed, secretly installed DRM protection measures with a program that was freely distributed constitutes a major violation of computer owners' absolute right to control what does and what does not get loaded onto their computers, and how their computers shall be used ... [SecuROM] cannot be completely uninstalled. Once installed it becomes a permanent part of the consumer's software portfolio ... EA's EULA for Spore Creature Creator Free Trial Edition makes utterly no mention of any Technical Protection Measures, DRM technology, or SecuROM whatsoever."
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.
What's to stop them? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
Re:I prefer another form of protest (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I prefer another form of protest (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:2, Insightful)
So frikking what?!
It would be the same situation if people had Deep Freeze installed on their PCs... or even if they re-installed or re-imaged their computers after the trial. It is stupid to think that people will not use free things over and over and over again. It is more stupid to take steps to ensure that their computers are impaired or limited in some way to ensure that. Sony did that and it didn't work out so well for them although I believe the remedy wasn't harsh enough.
What if drug manufacturers did the same thing? Modify your body in some way to prevent you from taking more than one free sample? I recognize this a very extreme example of the same general idea which is trying to control what the recipient of free things do with them.
Windows is already flakey and unstable enough as it is with every printer or other hardware maker insisting on loading utilities that start at boot time, AOL instant messenger, MSN messenger and all sorts of other nonsense being installed on top of flaky drivers and kernel mods. All this crap needs to stop. But it is "The American Way."
Software companies feel they need to protect their interests even when it means secret infiltration of property they do not own or otherwise have full legal rights to.
The Bush administration, other members of the government and most rednecks feel it is important to protect our interests even when it means invading other nations, killing people and destabilizing the world in the process. (Here's the acid test to ask yourself if this is okay or not: ask yourself if you would be okay with it if some other nation did that to you? If the answer is "hell no!" then you have your answer.)
Re:How to remove that crap? (Score:1, Insightful)
The idea is you can't fully remove it... which is why you and I get to hop on that class action lawsuit bandwagon.
YEHAW!
I didn't even buy anything from them and I get to sue them.
Karam's a bitch EA, and mine is excellent :D
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:0, Insightful)
One is easy to circumvent, the other is not?
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?
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.
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:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
What is wrong with EA? (Score:5, 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.
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:5, Insightful)
One continues to affect your computer's operation while the other does not.
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.
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:0, Insightful)
You didn't get the hint that you have to compare effectiveness as well.
If EA went with the non-obtrusive solution the Slashdot story would have been "Spore's Free Trial Time Limit Can Be Circumvented With One Registry Key Change", and you'd be ranting about how inept EA was. You can't have it both ways.
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.
Re:Should not have to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should not have to. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:2, Insightful)
They do, in fact, stop you from reinstalling programs. Both Spore and Red Alert 3 have a limit on the number of re-installs you're allowed.
Spore was originally 3 installs per purchase of the game but I think it got pushed up to 5 after thousands of people complained (correct me if I'm wrong - it may still be 3). Red Alert 3 is limited to 5 installs.
(And with the rate my boyfriend breaks my computer bad enough to need reformatting, I'm damn glad I pirated both or I'd need to buy a second copy by now...)
Re:Factual information, please? (Score:3, Insightful)
To my understanding, AnyDVD contains features that are specifically illegitimate (bypassing region codes). Daemon tools, why not illegitimate on its own, is frequently used for illegitimate purposes (note that playing a game you bought with Daemon Tools is probably not allowed under the games EULA, many of the ones I've actually read say something along the lines of 'only play the game with the original CD'.
Please keep in mind I'm not saying either of them is *wrong*. The DMCA, coupled with the ridiculous notion of allowing the copyright holder to dictate what you can and can't do with a copy you paid for, tends to produce (in my completely not in any way legal advice opinion) ridiculous results, and my goal in the post was to give unbiased information about what *is*, not what should be.
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.
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.
Re:How to remove that crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
And properly working file copying tools are not a requirment for an OS?
Even my OS supports weird files and "broken" filenames.
Re:Of course the installer must leave something (Score:3, Insightful)
You didn't get the hint that you have to compare effectiveness as well.
No I don't. The only thing I have to consider is that one damages my computer. I guess I'm just selfish, but I couldn't care less which method is more convenient for publishers.