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Boing Boing Threatened By Software Creator

Posted by Zonk on Tue Jan 31, 2006 01:47 PM
from the wah-wah-wah-all-the-way-home dept.
Security Entertainment Games
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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  • The FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:50PM (#14608380)
    He contacted the FBI?

    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, Insightful)

      by Otter (3800) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:58PM (#14608490) Journal
      The company is based in Russia and the guy is obviously not a native English speaker. I assume he doesn't have the slightest idea how US law works or how it's enforced.

      An odd choice as a PR figure, though...

      • Re:The FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bogtha (906264) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:14PM (#14608678)

        I assume he doesn't have the slightest idea how US law works or how it's enforced.

        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.

      • Re:The FBI? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jandrese (485) * <kensama@vt.edu> on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:00PM (#14608508) Homepage Journal
        I think he should send a letter back to the company asking for verification that the email isn't just the ramblings of some unaffilated nut. If they own up to it, then craft your own legalish looking letter with threatining wording telling them how you're collecting the names of everybody they've done this to so you can form your own harassment lawsuit. I wonder how long it would take them to panic and try to shut you up with hush money? These guys only exist because they call up game companies, give a slick speech with terms like "50% sales loss due to piracy" and the like, and convince them to use the software. If the companies start hearing bad things about them destabalizing users machines and boycotts of their software, they'd probably think twice about buying it from them. They can't afford to have their actual practices brought out into the sunlight.

  • Yay, more useless litigation... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PFI_Optix (936301) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:51PM (#14608393) Journal
    That's right, folks. Criticism is harassment. It's no longer voicing an opinion. The press' right to inform the consumer and raise awareness about problems no longer exists. At least, that's how these guys would like it to be. What we need is a way for judges to penalize plaintiffs if they are clearly attempting to infringe on the rights of others for their own gain, as the case would appear here.

    • Re:Yay, more useless litigation... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dptalia (804960) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:54PM (#14608429) Homepage Journal
      Well, it's not the press - it's the internet, so OF COURSE it's harassment! That's why some companies/politicians are so interested in the FCC rulings on bloggers. If the FCC declares them journalists then we're talking free press, but it they call it political speech that needs to be regulated then the door is open for such lawsuits.

  • Simple Fix - Don't Buy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by binaryspiral (784263) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:51PM (#14608397)
    When companies realise they are copy protecting themselves out of business, maybe others will learn from their mistakes and not treat every paying customer like a thief.

    Bravo for posting information on this - the public needs more information to make educated choices.

    • the problem with "don't buy" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist (166417) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:56PM (#14608452)
      People will buy until they know. Look around amongst your peers, mention "Sony rootkit" or "DRM" and check how many blank stares you receive.

      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.

  • My bad... my bad... (Score:5, Funny)

    by eno2001 (527078) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:54PM (#14608431) Homepage Journal
    Sorry. That was me. My Troll Tuesday antics got a little out of hand and I started calling everyone in my address book (Lycos People Search) and threatening to sue for unspecified amounts under the DMCA just to make a point. You can disregard the call. Sometimes a joke CAN go too far, can't it? ;P

  • Classic SLAPP Technique (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nf1nk (443791) <nf1nk&yahoo,com> on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:55PM (#14608441) Homepage
    This is a classic SLAPP technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP [wikipedia.org]
    One nice thing is that states like California have fairly strong anti Slapp laws and lawyers that specialize in this sort of case

  • Here is a picture of Dennis Zhidkov (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sundroid (777083) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:55PM (#14608448) Homepage
    Smile, you're on Slashdot: http://icoc.freehomepage.com/contact.html [freehomepage.com]

  • Don't you love how every time these people... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Avillia (871800) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @01:56PM (#14608461)
    Threaten to involve or claim to involve the FBI (Cybercrime)? Really, I swore they had better things to do than investigate petty sites using legally protected free speech to label corporate interests as having malicious intent with their product. Like, I dunno. Child Porn? I hope so.

    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)

      by dwandy (907337) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:37PM (#14608934) Homepage Journal
      claiming libel and slander when, again, opinions of a entities buisness practices are protected free speech...
      While opinions are protected, false 'facts' are not. The following (from the original) are not opinions, but were persented as statements of fact, not opinion:
      • The software causes system instability and crashes.
      • Starforce, on a regular basis, triggers this silent step down.
      • ...the Starforce drivers, installed on your system, grant ring 0 (system level) privileges to any code under the ring 3 (user level) privileges.

      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.
      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.
      ...so if Mr BoingBoing can't prove his statements he might be in for a rough ride...

  • What has been broken (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:00PM (#14608509)
    List of games they fucked up:
    http://fileforums.com/showpost.php?p=299834&postco unt=205 [fileforums.com]

    courtesy of http://www.fileforums.com/showthread.php?t=70333 [fileforums.com]

  • This is going to backfire, like Sony (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Animats (122034) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:01PM (#14608517) Homepage
    Making that threat was a big mistake. Now more security people will take a look at this "protection software", probably confirm the holes, and get it marked as hostile code. That will hit the mainstream press, and some major game vendors will be in the position Sony is now in. Expect some product recalls.

    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)

    by Paladin144 (676391) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:03PM (#14608554) Homepage
    At slashdot, we like to pretend that we're the Geek Mecca, and that we speak for all geeks. This is, of course, bullshit. Geeks are a huge demographic and they cannot be so easily summarized.

    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?

  • Boing Boing might in fact have a strong case vs Starforce here. Precedent was set by Kyle Bennett of HardOCP when he successfully defended [slashdot.org] vs Infinium Labs last year. I think what won him the case was his freedom of press rights. I wonder if Boing Boing could countersue for slander as Starforce contests his journalistic integrity.

  • Making a list and checking it twice (Score:5, Informative)

    by thaerin (937575) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:18PM (#14608718)
    Ever since I heard about some of the random issues caused by Starforce a few years back, I've always avoided any game title under it's protection. You can find a pretty good up-to-date list of known Starforce protected titles over here - http://www.glop.org/starforce/ [glop.org]

  • Perfect. Just Perfect. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Maxwell'sSilverLART (596756) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:24PM (#14608783) Homepage

    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."

    • Re:Two sides to every story (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mathonwy (160184) on Tuesday January 31 2006, @02:09PM (#14608625)
      Wow, can you say "astroturf comment"? Either that or troll, not sure which. Anyway, I'll bite:

      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.

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