Gamers, EFF Speak Out Against DRM 203
Last month, we discussed news that the FTC would be examining DRM to see if it needs regulation. They set up a town hall meeting for late March, and part of that effort involved requesting comments from potential panelists and the general public. Ars Technica reports that responses to the request have been overwhelmingly against DRM, and primarily from gamers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also took the opportunity to speak out strongly against DRM, saying flat out that "DRM does not prevent piracy," and suggesting that its intended purpose is "giving some industry leaders unprecedented power to influence the pace and nature of innovation and upsetting the traditional balance between the interests of copyright owners and the interests of the public." Their full public comments (PDF) describe several past legal situations supporting that point, such as Sony's fight against mod chips, Blizzard's DMCA lawsuit against an alternative to battle.net, and Sony's XCP rootkit.
Wrong battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong battle? (Score:5, Interesting)
DRM is also the problem. Where does this idea come from that you can only fight on one front?
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That's not actually true, code itself is still protected under first amendment grounds, and the companies would be nuts to try and enforce it on foreign nationals or people that are downloading it. Well, providing that you're within the provisions set forth in section 1201 of the DMCA, that is, which shouldn't be that hard to demonstrate.
In pretty much any case where you'd want to remove the DRM for personal use you'd likely be covered.
RIGHT battle! (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wish people would stop the arrogant assumption that they can always work around whatever DRM manufacturers create, even when they all get together to work against the public. Breaking cryptography is HARD. Some crypto is UNBREAKABLE in any reasonable amount of time, using any known techniques. The UK's Sky TV, for instance, has been using the same crypto on their satellite broadcasts for years now, with no cracks available.
Re:NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:RIGHT battle! (Score:5, Informative)
You're wrong.
DRM circumvention is a trusted-client-subversion problem, not a cryptanalytic problem (which is, indeed, much harder, though not typically impossible).
In DRM scenarios (which is what distinguishes them from securable encryption scenarios), the attacker has the ciphertext and the key, albeit possibly in an obfuscated or hard-to-access form. Given a sufficiently motivated attacker who has the key (in whatever form) under their control, the DRM scheme will always lose. (I've never seen any copy-protection scheme survive a serious attack, and I probably never will.)
The VideoGuard scheme used by Sky is broken in various ways, but the crackers are very secretive, and the breaks are almost unpublished (thanks mostly to heavy crackdowns). The presence of unencrypted transport stream rips of HDTV broadcasts proves the existence. You can't get the cracks easily; but clearly someone must indeed have them.
Maybe not (Score:3, Interesting)
"The presence of unencrypted transport stream rips of HDTV broadcasts proves the existence"
Not necessarily. I've noticed that almost every HD cable box has a component out that supports 1080i. There are boxes that will capture this stuff (for Myth as one possible use). The 1080p rips out there likely came from BluRay cracks.
In many ways, it's like WMP files from MS. The one genuine crack disappeared pretty quickly, and has not been repeated. However, I'm not convinced it's because WMP is "hard" to cra
Re:RIGHT battle! (Score:5, Insightful)
Please do not confuse DRM with standard encryption techniques. Normally, encryption is used between two or more parties to keep one or more other parties from reading the encrypted material. DRM, or TPM to be more precise, is used to keep the recipient of the material from copying it, while at the same time allow them to read it (otherwise they would never buy it). As such, any DRM that people want cracked will be cracked. I think your example says more about Sky TV than about their encryption technology. :)
DRM is a failure in that it provides the would be attacker with the message, the cypher, and the key. They just try to hide those last two, which is no true basis for protecting material.
Re:RIGHT battle! (Score:4, Funny)
Encryption is unbreakable. DRM is not because per definition you have the decryption key even if it's hidden very well. I'm quite sure I've seen SkyTV broadcast captures so I'm not sure what point you were trying to make, maybe there's no hack to decrypt the live broadcast but the content gets around anyway. Amazon and iTunes is dropping DRM, CSS is broken, AACS is pretty much broken, BD+ still has cramps but is dying so from where I'm sitting it looks like most entertainment has no effective DRM and no practical way to put that cat back in the bag - if DVD was good then Blu-Ray must be good enough for the next century. Software and consoles get a lot uglier but unbreakable is hardly the first word that comes to mind. Ultimately, that's why TPB is so popular and why we're having this case, right? Because DRM does not work, otherwise there wouldn't be anything to share on TPB.
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No, encryption is not unbreakable. It's merely hard enough to break that it's rarely feasible to do so.
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Every music CD you buy comes without DRM.
Not true at all. Ever heard of the Sony rootkit fiasco? (and that is just one example)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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More like going down the freeway at 60mph in first gear where you're right over the redline...
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No, it's more like having your air-cooled Volkswagen stuck in stop-and-go traffic.
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You do realize that by purchasing the game anyway you're sending the message that the DRM is ok. That you'll still bend over backwards to take it you know where regardless of what the publishers do? If you want to stop game DRM, don't buy DRM'd games. I know that you'll start shaking unless you get your fix, but there are plenty of options out there.
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While cracking the crypto may not be possible, in order for a DRM scheme to function you have to give paying customers the keys...
Those customers can just copy the keys and give them to people who haven't paid.
Sky TV have been using the same algorithms, but they keep changing the keys because the keys frequently leak.
Re:RIGHT battle! (Score:5, Insightful)
When companies spend millions to implement a particular solution, it's fair to assume they have a goal. For broadcasts that are 'free' (usually with the price of watching commercials), we can rule out some goals.
Copyright law is primarily economic - that is, the original goal was to prevent direct, measurable economic harm to the owner, not to prevent other kinds of harm. The exception, of course, is the European moral copyright model.
If DRM isn't protecting from direct economic harm, then what it ends up doing is making an end run around the limitations built into US style copyright, limitations such as fair use, or first sale rights.
All these end runs are wrong. It really doesn't matter if the goal is to protect against indirect economic harm from perfectly lawful competition, or to restrict consumer rights that the courts have long upheld, or to selectively enforce 'moral copyright' in countries where there's no actual law passed, and only for certain privileged entities. None of those is a good thing.
It's like catching somebody sneaking into a woman's dorm with a roll of duct tape, a bowie knife, and six pairs of handcuffs at 2 AM. We're getting into an argument over whether the goal was rape, murder, or robbery, and ignoring that none of the options are good things. When it comes to public airwaves style channels, no one has seriously been able to suggest a reason for DRM backed by the DMCA that doesn't involve something bad, whether it's an unfair government granted monopoly, an effort to screw consumers, or an attempt to enforce laws that haven't actually been passed.
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The anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA is based on the assumption that DRM works. It is much harder to defeat the DMCA if you ignore the fallacy of DRM because, then, legislators will keep believing it helps a large part of the US economy (that is, the media industry).
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Of course, that itself is a fallacy too! The media industry is not a large part of the US economy, by any measure. It's very visible because of its nature, but it's not large.
Re:Wrong battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's really the wrong battle. The big problem with DRM is that it arguably means that you're being sold a defective product. You're being sold something that's designed to break and ceases to serve its purpose under some circumstances.
I don't want to get into the particular argument here whether products with DRM are always defective, but it seems like a step in exactly the right direction for the government to recognize that DRM *can* constitute a defect in the product. Once there is some sense that DRM is not always valid, that it's possible for DRM to make a product so defective that they should be barred from selling it, then we can begin to talk about what, exactly, is "fair".
Personally, I don't think DRM is always awful. For example, companies putting DRM on movie rentals rather than movie sales seems fair. Although I didn't think I'd like Steam, once I tried it, it seemed to be a pretty reasonable use of DRM. In that particular situation, I view it this way: I've agreed to sign into a service before playing games, and in return, I have copies of my games hosted such that I have access to them wherever I want.
And I'm not sure where you draw the line on what's "fair" on DRM; I know plenty of people who just thing it's always bad. However, it would be a big win for consumers, for the government at least to recognize that it's not always acceptable. I would at least like to see a law that says that, if you're selling (not renting) products with DRM that checks against some server, then if you ever shut that server down, you are responsible for making available the means to permanently remove that DRM.
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No. Stuff that's being sold for money should work out of the box, not just have a workaround that only the tech savvy know about. DRM is still a massive inconvenience either way and installing a rootkit on your system isn't magically reversed just by cracking the software. Plus often the workaround is to download a version off TPB which isn't permitted even without the DMCA.
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In the mean time, you could just play games without any DRM, like Game! [wittyrpg.com]
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All people who are anti-DRM are also necessarily anti-Windows, because Windows has DRM.
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Because they already lost that battle when they failed to appeal 2600 v. MPAA.
Re:Wrong battle? (Score:4, Interesting)
When killing the enemy it is important to smash their weapons. DRM is an enemy weapon and breaking it is simply part of a continuing war to let communications be free from any governments desire to keep people in their own little box.
Re:Wrong battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA wasn't, in itself, a bad idea.
You're joking, right? The DMCA was a horrid idea, just like the eternal "copyright extensions" (which should have been unconstitutional as ex post facto law changes anyways) the content cartels have been buying constantly.
Think about it. Mickey Mouse - or at least Steamboat Willie, the cartoon - should have passed into the public domain DECADES ago. Meanwhile, Disney rapes and pillages the public domain with impunity; if you want to make an animated or live-action Snow White, or Beauty and the Beast, or anything else they've already done be prepared for their army of lawyers to start screaming "it's too similar, shut them down" even if you follow the original plotlines of the story/book in question.
What happened was that there was no attempt made to stop companies misusing it
Bullshit. DRM rapes the public domain AND tries to take away the fair-use rights of consumers at the same time.
Under fair use, I have the right to make a backup copy of something I purchased. There are MANY reasons to do this - fire/flood concerns, degradation of the original media (DVD's scratch, tapes wear out, etc), and of course the ever-present Small Children and My Dog That Likes To Chew On Things problems.
Under fair use, I also have the right to space-shift and time-shift content. Broadcast over the airwaves, but I'm out to dinner? No problem. Set a VCR up with a timer, watch it later. Archive it for posterity. Want to convert it for iPod, or PSP, or something else that's portable? I have the right to do so. The next round of "DRM" will be trying to push the so-called "broadcast flag" into the shortly-only-available-variety Digital TV broadcasts, which will require either (a) a recorder that ignores the flag or (b) the goodwill of the broadcaster. This is a fundamental shift that will wholly strip away people's ability to, say, record the sunday Packers game for later because they're busy volunteering as an adult chaperon for a church retreat.
With DRM, I am prevented from exercising my fair-use rights for perfectly legitimate reasons. Prior to the DMCA, if I could figure out a way around it (such as a Macrovision Stripper for VHS), I was able to get my rights back.
After the DMCA, no dice. I committed a "crime" doing what was necessary to exercise my legal right to safeguard what I had purchased.
The DMCA itself was a bad idea. Anyone who says differently needs to be slapped repeatedly.
Re:Wrong battle? (Score:5, Informative)
The DMCA was a horrid idea, just like the eternal "copyright extensions" (which should have been unconstitutional as ex post facto law changes anyways) the content cartels have been buying constantly.
"Ex post facto" has a specific legal meaning, which is completely different than whatever you think it means. Copyright extensions do suck, but they don't have anything to do with "ex post facto".
Re:Wrong battle? (Score:4, Informative)
"Ex post facto" has a specific legal meaning, which is completely different than whatever you think it means. Copyright extensions do suck, but they don't have anything to do with "ex post facto".
Ex post facto refers to something that changes the legality of an action retroactively. The DMCA changes the nature of copyright retroactively. It's not that inappropriate. Close enough for government work, at least.
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"Ex post facto" has a specific legal meaning,
Legal terms often have different meanings in general parlance. Lawyers really need to come to terms with the fact that most people's lives do not, and should not, revolve around the law.
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A neurotic is the man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent. - Jerome Lawrence
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Legal terms often have different meanings in general parlance. Lawyers really need to come to terms with the fact that most people's lives do not, and should not, revolve around the law.
Agreed. But the original poster was trying to make a constitutional argument regarding copyright extensions. It's impossible to make a legal argument without using legal terminology; "common usage" is simply too vague.
You're quite right, but... (Score:3, Informative)
While you're absolutely correct that ex post facto refers to criminalizing something after a person has committed the act, then arresting them, I would like to point out that the copyright extensions should have been unconstitutional for a very different reason.
I believe it was Eldred v. Ashcroft that pointed out that they were violating the "limited times" clause of the section of the constitution authorizing copyright laws by doing retroactive extensions. The only reason the Supreme Court didn't uphold t
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Re:Wrong battle? (Score:4, Insightful)
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What does copyright extension have to do with the DMCA?
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After a year without TV just reminds me how pathetic the whole thing is. People act like consuming entertainment media is air that you need to survive.
"Screw art and culture. Chew your cud, cow." (Score:3, Insightful)
> People act like consuming entertainment media is air that you need to survive.
Humans need to create art. It's what makes us human. Art exists to be consumed. We forget that at the risk of losing our humanity. The desire to create and share art freely is no less than a battle for the soul of humanity itself. There's nothing fucking pathetic about it.
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> People act like consuming entertainment media is air that you need to survive.
Humans need to create art. It's what makes us human. Art exists to be consumed. We forget that at the risk of losing our humanity. The desire to create and share art freely is no less than a battle for the soul of humanity itself. There's nothing fucking pathetic about it.
Very poetic. Insipid, but poetic.
Speaking strongly against DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
"DRM does not prevent piracy"
Which implies that piracy is an undesirable thing. Therefore we shouldn't be focused on DRM as the sole solution to the piracy problem, but as part of a larger set of steps to eliminate the problem.
Either piracy is a bad thing which ought to be dealt with, or it is a good thing which should be encouraged.
The EFF's point (as is typical for them) is full of rhetoric but fails to truly understand the issue. It's a shame they are on the right side because they aren't really helping.
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A bit like yourself then.
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From the EFF submission:
"DRM is touted as an effective means
to restrict copyright infringement, yet evidence continues to mount that DRM not only
does little to inhibit unauthorized copying, it may actually encourage it"
Sounds to me like they're not only calling it ineffective, but counterproductive.
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I don't know about on a mass scale, but i know several people who would rather pirate a game than suffer from DRM... Some of them will also buy the game first, but never actually use the purchased version.
There are many reasons behind this, such as a desire not to infect their systems with drm rootkits and the problems they cause, wanting to play without hunting for the media especially when traveling etc, wanting to let kids play without damaging the media (two fold here, without drm they no longer need th
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The Civ games have DRM? I thought they just had cd checks. Unless you're counting a simple "Do you have an original disc?" check when starting the game as DRM, which is surely not the problem.
DRM is Securom, it's Starforce, it's Steam. It's calling home everytime or during install or whenever the system decides that it doesn't trust you anymore.
You're seriously bitching about cd-checks? Oh my fucking god, to go back to a time when cd-checks were the height of anti-piracy measures.
Oh wait, you're already on
You left out E-rated games and handheld games (Score:2)
Auth systems work. By keeping the bulk of the game functionality on the server side, and requiring a login, 99% of DRM issues are covered.
So I guess the remaining 1 percent is that you're now completely ignoring the following markets:
If what you said were true, there would be no E-rated games, no Nintendo DS games, and certainly no E-rated DS games.
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Players under 13 years of age, in the United States and other countries with counterparts to COPPA.
Once mommy or daddy has clicked OK on the EULA, you're allowed to log in.
Laptops and handhelds without a mobile broadband plan, family parties in a rented hall, and other environments with no Internet access.
You would rent a hall without internet access?
Hearing this, RockStar announced their new game (Score:3, Funny)
DRM Killer, available later this fall featuring SecureROM.
Will they Listen? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that I don't see the political establishment listening to "a bunch of gamers and the EFF."
I think it tying together the Sony Root Kit issue with farms of own machines used for SPAMing, scaming, or organized crime would get a little attention.
The biggest problem I have had with DRM is that I rented Ratatouille [amazon.com] last year and was unable to play it on a standard DVD player, unable to play it on two different computer DVD players, and of course unable to make a copy (which I only tried because I couldn't play it.) The disk cause me to have to unplug and plug back in my Toshiba DVD player to even get it to eject, it totally locked up the player.
Re:Will they Listen? (Score:5, Insightful)
The politicians won't listen. Their ears will be plugged with earplugs made out of the lobbying money from the media conglomerates. They won't see a problem because consumers continue to buy and buy regardless of DRM in 90% of cases, and corporations continue to make money. There's nothing wrong with the situation, so far as they can see. That 10% that won't buy DRM'd media? Pirates. All of them. We just haven't caught and convicted them yet.
The only way to shut down the DRM monster is mass boycott. And I mean MASS. I mean you have to get your parents that don't know shit about DRM protesting. You have to get soccer moms, the 14 year old kids vulnerable to media hype and willing to buy anything, the exec with his iPod crammed with DRM'd tunes... get them ALL educated and more importantly angry enough to stop buying for a couple years.
It's difficult enough to appear very close to impossible.
I demonstrated it to my mother when she wanted to play a CD for me. At the time I had no CD player other than my PC. Her CD refused to play. I looked it up online, sure enough it had copy protection preventing us from listening to her CD she paid for. I showed her how to circumvent the protection (a little marker on the outside track), and she became incensed. She's not purchased music for about 5 or 6 years now. She was disgusted that people were treating her, one of the most honest people (to a fault) that I know, like a common criminal even though she gave them money for their product.
Find a way to make people feel that way BEFORE it bites them, and you'll have what we need to win. Until then, good luck. So long as the money flows, they won't hear a damn thing we say.
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get them ALL educated and more importantly angry enough to stop buying for a couple years.
Won't work. Far too many, even when they have a fair understanding of how things work, either don't care much -- they'll see it as a nuisance, not an issue of rights -- or will actually side with the corporations. It's a lot easier to see both sides if you're reasonably educated (and probably a pirate yourself, at least once).
The politicians won't listen. Their ears will be plugged with earplugs made out of the lobbying money from the media conglomerates.
That is the real problem. I imagine there will be at least one other major issue on which these politicians are taking lobbying money and acting against the public interest, perhaps on
"Oh No!! Not... not The EFF!!" (shudder) (Score:2)
Sometimes I think Slashdot invented the EFF.
It certainly goes out of it's way to keep it alive. Certainly it's efforts in this area are way disproportionate to the EFF's actual credibility in legal circles, where they are the Britney Spears in a boardroom full of King Crimsons.
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Certainly it's efforts in this area are way disproportionate to the EFF's actual credibility in legal circles, where they are the Britney Spears in a boardroom full of King Crimsons.
Equally irrelevant, as corporate tools?
DRM is essentially illegal in spirit (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole copyright agreement is to allow exclusive distribution rights to specific material or content for a limited amount of time, after which the works would be released to the public domain.
So far, the industry has managed to have copyright duration extended to unreasonable durations increasing the likelihood that after the copyright term expires, it will no longer be available for access or distribution. But that isn't harmful enough. Now they want to keep the works locked up in an encryption scheme that will likely make copyrighted materials extinct long before the copyright term expires as no one will be able to access it after the term expires.
This is a complete and total breech of the copyright agreement with the people of any given nation that respects copyright under law.
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The idea was that the inventer would gain profit for a set period of time, after which the idea could be adopted by others. This had the net affect of reducing the price through competition, increasing quality, and innovating new ideas based off of the original.
The laws have been twisted so far from their original intent it's just r
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And when Steven Breyer on the left and Clarence Thomas on the right agree that current US copyright law is unConstitutional, then it means that Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who wrote the opinion) and those in the middle who agreed with her are despicable oath-breaking liars.
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Actually it is (or rather was) a major part of copyright law. As evidenced by "copyright libraries" which were intended to hold a copy of every book published.
It's a common part of modern copyright laws nationally and internationally, true.
All copyright laws are "modern" the concept only came into being a few hundred years ago
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US copyright law was an intentional break with European law. The history you're mentioning was a history of the King deciding which friends got protection. So if we're moving back to that era, are we gonna have state religions and divine right of kings too? Cause that's a pretty damned good reason to go back to something more like what the US founding fathers envisioned.
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You have GOT to be kidding. Without the promise of release into the public domain, there would be no incentive to allow laws respecting copyright to be created in the first place.
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This is a complete and total breech of the copyright agreement with the people of any given nation that respects copyright under law.
Perhpas now you understand why some people, even reasonable people, realizing the power of the political forces and money arrayed against them, have taken to guerilla warfare tactics ala the Rebellion vs the Evil Empire because that is the only way that they can realistically fight back. Personally, I just refuse to buy OR use their games or content. My time is too valuable to spend on 99% of their junk anway. I don't need them to get by and I need them even less during an economic recession when resources
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To be fair, if your mission is to deprive them of money, it doesn't matter if you "pirate" their content or not, only that you don't buy it.
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What a timely story (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What a timely story (Score:4, Informative)
Also, you should go back to the store you bought the game from, ask to see the manager, and tell him one of his employees is stealing CD keys from the games.
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I had that happen with The Orange Box (sealed package with in-use key). A email to Valve and a copy of receipt was all it took to get a legit key. Took about 2 days.
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Writing your own laws (Score:5, Insightful)
With the DMCA and the anti-circumvention provisions, the restriction code has the power of law - circumventing it is illegal.
So they can ignore whatever fair use privilege we used to enjoy, because fair use privileges aren't guaranteed rights: if you can't make use of it for whatever reason - tough; they're not required to provide you with tools or systems to give you what you want, even if it could be legal.
So this all boils down to the fact that we've lost all fair use in copyright law (maybe not in theory, but definitely in practice), and as such, copyright has become completely unbalanced in favour of the copyright owners.
The tradeoff was: a temporary monopoly on distribution with some fair use exceptions, in return for a rich public domain later on.
Not only have we lost fair use, we've also lost the public domain part later on. Because the DRM on copyrighted works that end up in the public domain isn't going to magically disappear.
All we're left with is "a monopoly on distribution" - that's not what copyright was supposed to be.
DRM has become a bad sore for consumers (Score:3, Interesting)
Sony may argue stating that the movies wont play because they are pirated. They are not. They were DVD's bought from reputable stores.
This is how bad DRM has become. Consumers are at the mercy of manufacturers of DRM laden products.
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I know everyone likes to hack sony with the rootkit issue (the
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I often have had trouble playing DVDs on the Xbox, even using the (official, licensed) Microsoft DVD player enabled by the IR dongle. The same discs play fine on the Playstation 2. In fact the PS2 is usually my effective DVD player of last resort.
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This is how bad DRM has become. Consumers are at the mercy of manufacturers of DRM laden products.
I don't understand why they didn't return the Sony DVD player as defective? If more people did that, then perhaps we wouldn't be as much at their mercy as we are now...
They spoke out (Score:2)
But the people that make the decisions didn't listen.
hmm. not sure i buy the eff's line there. (Score:2)
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A totally different problem with DRM... (Score:2)
Is that there is no law saying when it expires.
There will come a time when the copyright of a game expires. (Yes, it will take decades.) At that time, how can a game be fairly copied if the DRM is still in place?
It's a pretty easy solution. (Score:2)
Build a time machine, send all us gamers back fifteen years, and make all these goddamn idiots stop fucking copying every single fucking release that came out so piracy never becomes a problem that, in the minds of the publishers, it warrants such horribly intrusive anti-piracy measures in the first place. Seriously, this was brought on ourselves, and while the Securom solution is inelegant, ineffective and outright unacceptable, when you've got thousands of people sitting on major torrents for every new ga
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Yes, exactly. It's gotten so bad that we can't even refund a PC game.
Is it the game stores fault that all the moronic customers would copy the game and come back for a refund? No, there's a point where they said enough is enough and now everything is fucked up because of the selfish few/majority.
If everyone stopped pirating games today, right now then I bet that game publishers would get rid of DRM.
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What do sales have to do with anything? Sales can be great, but if it can be seen that people are still copying the hell out of stuff, these sort of measures will inevitably be implemented. Sales, good or bad or otherwise aren't a factor in this; a point you've (inadvertently?) made yourself. If the publishers can see that people are getting their product without paying for it they will take steps to stop that regardless of how much money they are making the first place.
Region encoding should be illegal. It
Law of Unintended Consequences (Score:2)
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I predict that if DRM were somehow decided to be a detriment to the consumer and declared illegal, there would be a mass exodus of game publishers (and possibly developers) from the PC world, fearful of the impending piracy wave.
If every game moves to consoles, then all the hax0rs' efforts will be focused on hacking the consoles, at which point you don't have to hack the games themselves.
Alternately, any console which uses lame software-based protection like the Dreamcast will be business as usual.
Either way, if it leads to more games on consoles it will lead to more controller options (perhaps including generic HID support) and it will lead to better consoles. So I'm all for it. It's not like it will stop piracy, or even slow it d
I don't see the point of this (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood today, but... what good are these discussions?
The whole DRM mess has been chewed over and over and over again, and we always get the same results:
* DRM or not DRM doesn't matter: piracy is around 80% either way. This has not changed for 25 years.
* Company managers are too reality-disfunct to realise this, and are willing to pay for (expensive) DRM systems to include in their product.
* Dito politicians, usually bought by the industry, and who are worthless by definition anyway.
* Nobody will do a boycott.
* We cannot change any of these points.
Possible solutions:
* Buy the original with DRM and live with it.
* But the original with DRM and download a pirate copy.
* Download a pirate copy only.
* Refuse any DRM games, buy from the indy market instead.
Note on the last point: I bought very very few 'normal' games in the last few years (I refuse DRM), but quite a few from these interesting small companies. Cheaper, ofter better (even if the graphics usually aren't), lots of fun, and you have the feeling that you're supporting the good programmers directly instead of some worthless CEOs 3rd Mercedes 500SEC.
I bought (and can highly recommend) games like "World of Goo" or "Galactic Civilization II".
HOWEVER: some indy games have now come out with DRM. Beware of these! A good example would be "Defense Grid". An excellent, cheap game, but sold only via STEAM or Greenhouse, both of which are a form of DRM not allowing you to play the game without internet access. And even if you install them on a different PC (eg at work, with net access) and transfer the registry info, it won't work as it's registered to your CPU ID.
(Yes, I'm very pissed off about this specific example. Particularly as the support from Greenhouse does not exist).
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But the root of all greevil is of co
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Just wanted to say, login/auth is just a silly form of DRM. It's how blizzard has made so much, really. If it wasn't authenticated that way it'd be, I don't know, BnetD? God forbid people play on other things, and all that. Not like that made their company big, or anything. (/sarcasm)
meanwhile, a VM would absolutely never work. There's a problem with VM's, and it's called adaptability. Also once there is a VM that can handle openGL in its entirety (better than wine), you just opened a new bag because nobody
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Well, a VM adapts your native hardware into a single form that software can utilize...
Windows does exactly the same, the hardware may differ but the programming interface is largely the same. Both introduce performance losses relative to fully native code.
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There's a real need for investor education.
Most market analysts will steer investors away from buying into a profitable business if the projected labor costs are rising. It's common for some industries to regard anything above 10% of costs being labor related as a sure sign of failure on the horizon.
A law firm that takes on an IP lawsuit usually expects 33-35% of the projected profits or more if they succeed - sometimes 50% or more. That ought to be viewed as a labor situation. If you
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BnetD was after Vivendi? What about Freecraft (which I also haven't forgiven Blizzard for)?
Emigration to avoid copyright abuse? (Score:2)
The DMCA is another point entirely as it's only for USA citizens.
Three problems with this line of reasoning:
How do I do it right without multiplayer? (Score:2)
World of Warcraft does it right, imo. You have an account and you log in. They authorize you. Warden is non-intrusive.
So how would one "do it right" on a handheld gaming system that isn't a cell phone, or another single-player gaming environment?
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So how would one "do it right" on a handheld gaming system that isn't a cell phone, or another single-player gaming environment?
The same way they've been doing it forever, by using carts or other specialized media which raise the price of playing pirated games substantially above the cost of paying for the number of games necessary to pay for the product, at least for long enough to make enough money to justify the new design and to do a cost reduction.
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Just spinning your wheels (Score:5, Informative)
The use of the word "piracy" to describe copyright infringement is as old as the 1709 Statute of Anne
--- when the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean.
The geek is NEVER going to win this argument.
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Ironic when FSF calls DRM "restrictions management". They're just as guilty of inventing words.
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I paid for Mech IV vengeance and I am still affected by DRM. I need the CD to start the game even with the no-CD patch (not sure why that is...) which is damned annoying, especially on the road. I got a laptop with a powerful 3d card specifically so I could play games while out in the world, otherwise some intel integrated would be fine. But the point is that someone who copied the game and is using the same patch (seems to be the latest, I also tried making my own with unsafediscx in a win95 vm which will
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The best "DRM" I've seen was a shareware program that shipped with source code for UNIX based systems. The directions were to register it for $25, then set the REGISTERED macro to 1. Of course, you could do that without registering it, but it was obvious that doing so was an EULA violation.
Another example of this is iDupe, a program to find and optionally remove duplicate tracks in iTunes on OS X. When you register it, it has a very simple method to tell the program that it is registered (and not the sha
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Impulse doesn't include DRM.