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Boing Boing Threatened By Software Creator
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:47 PM
from the wah-wah-wah-all-the-way-home dept.
from the wah-wah-wah-all-the-way-home dept.
mfh writes "StarForce has issued threats to Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow in retaliation to Cory's post about the anti-copy malware that installs itself along with many popular (and unpopular) video games." From the BoingBoing post: "Yesterday, I posted about StarForce, a harmful technology used by game companies to restrict their customers' freedom. StarForce attempts to stop game customers from copying their property, but it has the side-effects of destabilizing and crashing the computers on which it is installed. Someone identifying himself as 'Dennis Zhidkov, PR-manager, StarForce Inc.' contacted me this morning and threatened to sue me, and told me that he had contacted the FBI to complain about my 'harassment.'"
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Games: Lawsuit Against Ubisoft for Starforce 106 comments
Cyber Akuma writes "Due to Ubisoft's intentional use of the highly controversial copy protection scheme Starforce, despite user protests and purposeful deletion of any forum discussions about the protection, Christopher Spence has filed a 5 Million Dollar lawsuit against the company for use of the crippling DRM in their games. Starforce has been reported to cause system instability, slowdowns, and possible damage to optical drives. As well as questionable business practices when dealing with customers and other companies, which has been reported on Slashdot before."
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Boing Boing Threatened By Software Creator
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The FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's only one response to this nut. Laugh at him because he obviously doens't have a clue as to how to bring legal action against you.
Re:The FBI? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.ceyah.org/~jandrese/ | Last Journal: Thursday September 13, @11:11AM)
Re:The FBI? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The FBI? (Score:4, Interesting)
More importantly, make sure it's addressed to the directors of the company. I'm sure they won't appreciate their PR manager making a PR disaster even worse.
Re:The FBI? (Score:5, Informative)
if you read their rules [star-force.com] you have to travel at YOUR expense to moscow to demonstrate the problem. You then have to demonstrate in ONE DAY a problem with the DVD/CD drive which "Until it reaches the latter stages most people do not even realise it is happening. [boingboing.net]"
The contest is a PR move with rules constructed to make winning impossible. The bashing has been on target and valid.
Re:The FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday November 12, @09:37AM)
An odd choice as a PR figure, though...
Re:The FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I assume he doesn't have the slightest idea how US law works, or how it's enforced, or that Cory Doctorow [wikipedia.org] is Canadian, or that he lives in London.
Yay, more useless litigation... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday March 31 2006, @11:17AM)
Re:Yay, more useless litigation... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://austin.rug.googlepages.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 02 2005, @05:03PM)
Re:Yay, more useless litigation... (Score:5, Insightful)
What a terrifying seven words...
Re:Yay, more useless litigation... (Score:5, Informative)
You understand that one of the 'rules' of this competition was that it had to do permanent damage. Someone (multiple people, actually) showed them that when they installed a game with StarForce, their DVD(cd?) drive began to malfunction. However, they would not let this individual claim the prize because after completely wiping the HDD and reinstalling windows it began to work properly. They claimed this did not harm the system because it did not do permanent damage.
(I don't have a source to back this up right now, I'll find the article later.)
If I install a game on my system I don't want to have to reinstall my OS everytime I want to burn a DVD.
Re:Yay, more useless litigation... (Score:5, Informative)
That last sentence means that you must make the software actually physically fubar you drive to the point it will not work in ANY SYSTEM without starforce protection. Everyone knows starforce isn't physically smashing drives with hammers; they are breaking drivers to the point one needs to reinstall Windows.
This contest will never be won.
As a side note, if you decide you want to try to win this contest anyway, you must foot the bill to fly to Moscow (the one on the other side of the planet) and show the folks in the office.
Simple Fix - Don't Buy (Score:5, Insightful)
Bravo for posting information on this - the public needs more information to make educated choices.
the problem with "don't buy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, WE know it. Now. Thanks for posting. But we already knew. We already take care of our computers. We already check on CDs if they are REALLY CDs. We already make sure that our Games don't hassle us with "I don't wanna run as long as you have that CD Emu soft running".
But we don't count, folks. We are a minority. We think before we act. And most of all, we think before we buy.
We're a small minority. We don't count.
Re:the problem with "don't buy" (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.no2id.co.uk/)
And they tell their friends, and slowly the pool of available knowledge of these matters, and people's awareness of them, is increased.
And the snowflake becomes a snowball, and the snowball becomes an avalanche.
Saying "we don't count" is apathy bordering on self-pity.
Stop it! And instead do what little you're able! It all adds up. :-)
Re:the problem with "don't buy" (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.jimtuck.net/ | Last Journal: Saturday June 25 2005, @03:08AM)
I work about the last place you'd expect to be tech savvy: A railroad, surrounded by union truck drivers, most of which are pushing retirement age.
I'd say most of them own a home computer. Of the ones that own a PC, most could reinstall the OS without trouble. They all know about spyware, and I've heard at least one "AdAware vs. Spybot" zealotry argument. At least one of them reads
I could walk into the break room and say "Sony rootkit" and probably three quarters of them would know exactly what I was talking about.
The reach is getting bigger, boys and girls. The second their digital TVs break, or their mp3s no longer work, the blue collar slice of America will know and complain, rest assured.
Re:Simple Fix - Don't Buy (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.star-force.com/ (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday November 14 2005, @11:24AM)
Re:No point in getting us riled up without a targe (Score:5, Informative)
PR Manager
StarForce Technologies
Altufevskoe shosse, 5/2
127106 Moscow, Russia
Tel +7 (095) 9671451
Fax +7 (095) 9671452
ICQ: 75-371-896
E-mail: denis.zhidkov@star-force.com
Http: http://www.star-force.com/ [star-force.com]
My bad... my bad... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.kickthebobo.com/erotech/index.html | Last Journal: Friday October 26, @11:51AM)
Classic SLAPP Technique (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
One nice thing is that states like California have fairly strong anti Slapp laws and lawyers that specialize in this sort of case
Re:Classic SLAPP Technique (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a picture of Dennis Zhidkov (Score:5, Informative)
(http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/)
Re:Here is a picture of Dennis Zhidkov (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday November 13, @10:52AM)
And apparently he's spends a lot of free time pissing gamers off:
Starforce Posts Thier Objections to Toms Hardware [subsim.com]
This may seem familiar (from C|Net): StarForce Response [com.com]
Can you say whacko? Ooooopppss! I may be attracting a lawsuit or at least a visit from the FBI...
Re:Here is a picture of Dennis Zhidkov (Score:5, Funny)
How is this harrasment? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday April 08 2005, @09:31PM)
Software is written that destabilizes a system, causes a crash and could potentially damage hardware.
What am I missing?
Re:How is this harrasment? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Uh, no. Cory said that the Starforce driver caused performance degradation over time, eventually making it impossible to burn discs. He did not say that the drive was physically damaged.
Starforce is only paying out if you can show them a physically damaged drive. It's a classic straw man. They know that drives are not physically being damaged, but by focusing attention on that idea, they are misdirecting people away from the fact that their software leaves Windows unable to burn discs.
Don't you love how every time these people... (Score:5, Interesting)
And then, of course, comes the OMG LAWSUIT brigade, claiming libel and slander when, again, opinions of a entities buisness practices are protected free speech...Hoping to tie up critics in a huge and costly (in the short term) legal battle to silence them. (PriceRitePhoto scandal, anyone?)
It just goes to show the sort of people behind this company that, instead of making logical arguments against their critics, they choose to take the 'dirty route' with the aforementioned threats...360, Claira, Jack Thompson, PriceRitePhoto..
I really, really, really hope someone gets up the gonads to take one of these foolish corporations, PARTICULARY so a adware/spyware corporation or someone with similar malicious intent to court when they issue a groundless Cease and Desist in a attempt to hold face and further their own intent.
Fin.
Re:Don't you love how every time these people... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=list&uid=907337 | Last Journal: Tuesday August 07, @10:58AM)
An opinion might read like "It seems to me that my system became unstable after I installed some software. or I don't like the food at McDonald's.
...so if Mr BoingBoing can't prove his statements he might be in for a rough ride...
A statement of fact should be presented with backing documentation, something like After installing on a clean machine, using SomeMonitoringSoftware and SomeSoftwareToBeTested, it was noted that there were packets lost and the silent step-down was initiated by WinXP.
Re:Don't you love how every time these people... (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps your view is because you are not aware of the very extensive evidence that has previously been posted in highly respective technical forums in the past about this subject.
Read this from Tom's Hardware's Aaron McKenna:_ pirates/index.html [tgdaily.com]
http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/10/01/the_war_on_game
Read the follow up letter by Starforce:h tml?c=256&id=658 [star-force.com]
http://www.star-force.com/protection/protection.p
Read Aaron's response letter to Dennis Zhidkov at:
http://www.glop.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=93 [glop.org]
Ubi has received numerous emails from registered users of their games who have experienced this problem and are investigating them. Check their forums for more details on that.
Starforce regularly LOCKS and even deletes threads on their own forums whenever someone posts requesting for help with problems related to those discussed here, so they can keep up the pretense of not having any legitimate reports of problems.
I completely agree with Aaron's letter. When copy protection seeks to do modification to a person's system, regardless of what kind of "permission" they confuse the end user into giving them, then copy protection is going too far.
And making non-specific overstated threats to silence public critics is one of the must surefire signs that a company is trying to hide something.Re:Don't you love how every time these people... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cory is lucky (Score:3, Funny)
What has been broken (Score:5, Informative)
http://fileforums.com/showpost.php?p=299834&postc
courtesy of http://www.fileforums.com/showthread.php?t=70333 [fileforums.com]
This is going to backfire, like Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.animats.com)
This controversy is good. Games must be stopped from installing code which runs with kernel or administrator privileges. That's introducing too many security holes now, by preventing users from running as a nonprivileged user. Users can't lock down their machines and still run games. That's no longer acceptable.
Geeks embrace copy protection and DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.timoregan.com/)
That may explain why some people here might be puzzled to notice that geeks are among the most fervent supporters of DRM, copy-protection, spyware and other restrictive technologies. Witness the many gamers who have StarForce installed on their systems. Witness the many iTunes lovers (myself included) who've bought into the DRMed songs Apple offers.
It's sad to realize that we are heading straight into a DRM/copy-protection nightmare, and the worst part is that we're fully aware where we're going. Gamers are leading the way. They seem to be fully content to have anti-copying and anti-cheating software running in the background while they play World of Warcraft or Half-Life. It seems that these companies are using our geek tendencies (must...play...new...game!) against us. Is this the beginning of the end of our freedom on the net?
Re:Geeks embrace copy protection and DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ceyah.org/~jandrese/ | Last Journal: Thursday September 13, @11:11AM)
Boinging for justice (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.demodulated.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 05 2006, @01:38PM)
Interesting side note (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.zembek.net/)
Too bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.gemstate.net/friends | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @10:32AM)
You want to stop it? Flood the publisher of these games with email telling them that you will not buy games with this use this DRM.
They have the right to put it on and we have the right not to buy.
Re:Too bad. (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 25 2006, @11:02PM)
Buy the game, then go download an ISO & use a NoCD patched/cracked exe
gamecopyworld.com is one of the many places you can find such things. GCW has been around for a long time and you don't have to worry about trojans/virii/etc.
On the other hand, if you want to make a statement, write those companies a letter telling them exactly why you're not going to buy their games.
Just laying out your options for ya.
Making a list and checking it twice (Score:5, Informative)
Boycott Starforce (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.stage11.ca/)
Perfect. Just Perfect. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.barefootclown.net/)
This is absolutely perfect. StarForce is accusing Doctorow of slander and/or libel (probably libel, as his remarks were published). Now, if he wants to press that case, Doctorow will have the opportunity to validate his claims in court. If he fails, he'll be found liable (of libel), and punished accordingly--as it should be. If he succeeds, plaintiff (StarForce) will lose, and will get the additional bonus of having their software be demonstrated in court as malware.
As an additional bonus, if StarForce loses, Doctorow can countersue, also for slander and/or libel--if you accuse me of lying, and I'm not, it damages my reputation.
As long as Doctorow is confident in his claims, his only thought should be "bring it on."
Interview with Starforce (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.khalidine.com/)
So what if it reads more like a press release... but of particular interest is this: There is no legal concern because before a user loads a game, he or she has agreed to accept the conditions of the end-user licensing agreement, typically known as a EULA. These are also known as click and go, or click and accept agreements. When you accept, you are saying I will load this game or application at my own risk, and have read and understood the terms. Or there will be a disclaimer that protects the publisher from damages of any kind due to their products' use. Our product is licensed to our customers, and becomes part of their product, so the user by accepting the terms, is giving approval.
It seems to me that one could read that to say that they are knowingly installing software that can damage a computer, and that the manufacturer is not liable. But anyway, I'm curious about the wording on that license -- since this is third party software, I wonder if it's still covered.
Re:Two sides to every story (Score:5, Insightful)
If there have been documented cases of it causing problems, then it doesn't really matter if there have been other cases where it was fine. Even if only 10% of end users see problems, don't you think everyone still would like to know about it, so they can make informed decisions?
Or, to put in another, more emotionally charged frame: If there was a baby-food that worked fine most of the time, but in 10% of cases caused the baby to explode violently, don't you think people (particularly potential customers) should be told that there were risks? Just because someone could say "well, MY baby didn't explode" would not somehow absolve the company of responsability of the 10% that did.