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Controversial StarForce Copy Protection Creators Quizzed
Thanks to FiringSquad for its interview with the creators of the StarForce copy protection scheme for PC videogames. The author explains: "In recent months there's been an increasing awareness and alarm over StarForce copy protection. It's actually a driver that installs itself with the [Windows] games that come shipped with it, and originally it didn't uninstall when the game was uninstalled." StarForce's Abbie Sommer argues the advantages of "driver-level copy protection", explaining: "The drivers are what prevents the use of kernel debugger utilities such as SoftICE, Cool Debugger, Soft Snoop etc. Also the drivers prevent emulators from spoofing a drive, and thwart burning tools such as Alcohol 120%." The author concludes by injecting a little personal opinion into the mix, arguing: "PC games will never go away, but if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease."
Thanks for nothing! If I want to use these tools then I shouldn't have to put up with this kind of crap from software companies. It's almost like them installing a virus. They wouldn't like it if I installed software on their machines that denied access to certain things, would they.
It's a Bagel.
I hope the big publishers all get run off of the computer game industry, and all the people who like "gaming" instead of computer games go with them.
Then those of us who prefer good games to good graphics will have computer games to ourselves again.
Bring back the games on floppies in little plastic bags!
and you can be sure that I'll start to behave like one.
The guy is missing something. They're trying so hard to beat softice.. but they forget that pros don't need to use breakpoints, thus they don't need to actually run the app to disassemble it.
http://hte.sf.net would work just peachy.
"if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease."
Yeah, I've been hearing that since my Amiga gaming days, back when I had to travel to the capital city just to find a place that sold legitimate game copies, back when piracy was as just a blank floppy away. Look how much the number and quality has shrunk in the gaming market since then...
.... cause we all know how much damage piracy does to the music industry. Ba-zing!
That's right. All your base.
I thought everytime a new device was installed or driver, windows would ask you if you want to have it installed regardless of the fact it is WHQL signed. Please, is there a group policy I can change to not alow ANY drivers be it real or virtual to be installed without my explicit permission?
Life is not for the lazy.
Brad Wardell (Galactic Civilizations, etc) has some thoughts on piracy and the problems with PC games:
google groups link here
http://www.balorn.net/
?
The stronger you make the copy protection, the more you inconvenience your legitimate users, and the more attractive the "cracked" product becomes. Making the w4rz3d version a more useful product than your original is a bad marketing ploy.
Gee, do you think this attitude might force a lot of people to conclude that PC games are such a pain they might as well buy a console and play there?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
In my opinion, such things should be categorized as malware, and should only be allowed if adequate warning is given to the user before installation.
Anyway, even when installed as a driver, it can't be fully crack-proof --- the driver can be removed, and the game code can be changed to skip the accesses to the driver. If the game is popular enough, a crack will soon be produced (probably unusable for Internet games though), and even legit users may use them so that they can get rid of the driver that is possibly destabilizing the system.
For gamers with CD-ROMs that are incompatible with SecuROM (and other copy protection measures), it is currently more convenient to download and crack pirated versions, than to buy a legitimate copy.
This is a dangerous discrepancy, and is running the game industry into the ground.
This is such an apologist piece. From author's viewpoint, this is a done deal, copy protection is a necessity, and he doesn't address the issue of fair use at all. When I buy my videogames, I rarely install them, instead preferring to find a cracked version first, so I don't have to deal with all of the crap, like unwanted driver installations, that I don't know if I'm getting. The guys at Penny Arcade have said the same as well.
I don't play games without purchasing them (though I did as a student, because I was poor then. If I hadn't then, I probably wouldn't have the gaming drive now that causes me to purchase all of the games I do.), and I'm starting to buy less and less PC games because of the crap I have to deal with. Do you hear that, developers? That is the sound of lost sales.
I bought XIII, which had some protection that caused the graphics and performance to slowly degrade if the CD is not in the drive. Normally, I would have kept that game to play again in the future, but instead I found someone who was looking to buy it, and gave it to them instead. One more lost sale.
Could you imagine if a PS2 game you bought installed updated CD/DVD drivers on the memory card, and it caused problems with reading other discs? How about if you couldn't play games on your PS2 just becaused you owned an Action Replay disc? They can be used to play copied games too, you know. This sort of crap is unacceptable, and developers who realize that are in a unique position to capture extra market share. Sure, writing a crappy game won't get you sales, but with two equally good games, there are definitely people who will choose the one that doesn't treat them like a criminal if they know there is a difference.
... this is a pretty interesting point. Cedega (formerly WineX) does not have support for most of the new copy protection mechanisms around, and mentions as much in their documentation. This means that you can install and run pirated games in Linux that you wouldn't be able to in Windows.
I mention this not to promote piracy, but because it raises an interesting legal point - Transgaming are technically selling a product that allows you to circumvent copy protection - granted, in a very broad sense. But I wonder how long they'll be allowed to proceed before getting smacked down under the new US laws designed to prevent this sort of thing.
"By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings."
I seem to recall some software a few years back which came with a dongle, I also seem to recall that someone managed to fake that dongle so you can pirate the software anyway. Take a lesson here people, if you can't stop piracy with hardware you sure as hell can't do it will software, in all reality Paladium(assuming it ever shows up) probably won't stop piracy. This is for a simple reason, for every guy out there trying to come up with ways to prevent piracy there are at least 100 attempting to circumvent it, and these guys are really really good. There's a lesson here, a lesson we should all have learned a long, long, long time ago, because it's been true since the first copy protection ever implemented. ALL COPY PROTECTION DOES IS INCONVENIENCE THE LEGITIMATE USER. Sorry to have shouted that, but I wouldn't want someone to miss that one. No method of copy protection every created has stopped people from pirating software and the only way I can see that changing any time in the forseeable future.
First off, you most can certainly debug driver modules. SoftICE runs Ring 0. Even if their driver runs Ring 0, you can still see it. It's also on your hard disk. Even if it somehow disables the machine if SoftICE is detected, you have the data. It will be disassembled and it will be cracked.
/rant
And this brings up a point about copy protection. It really only fucks with the people who actually buy the CD. I bought The Sims after, admittedly, not paying for it for a while. But I did go out and buy it after about a month, and lo and behold my CD Key was already registered. Ah well, an email took care of that. But, next I buy Neverwinter Nights. Damn CD Protection goes so far as to not work in my DVD drive. This happens with a TON of protected games. Flight Simulator 2002 would continuously corrupt on install, SimCity 4, Baldurs Gates both 1 AND 2... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the SecuROM/SafeDisc methods do *not* produce valid Redbook CDROM standard CD's. Doesn't happen on non-secured discs like Streets and Trips, Windows XP, etc... Either way, I paid for these games and they don't work. Yet I can steal them and they work, no hassle. Hmm, not too hard of a debate. I actually sometimes will buy the game then download the crack because I'm tired of dealing with shitty copy protection.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
"PC games will never go away, but if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease."
:-P
Almost a perfect quote from computer mags 10 years ago, yet World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights 2, Half-Life 2, etc are under development. How can that be? Games constantly rise in technical quality and complexity, and it's not uncommon these days to have games in development for 4 years or more. It's BIG business.
In contrast, if predictions like that were true, we'd probably play something like Alien Invaders 2000 by now.
Personally, I think -- yes, piracy is bad if you don't buy the games you actually like. In other cases, I find it to be very useful. That games have demo versions isn't a given, especially not demo versions you can try out before a game hits the store to decide if you should get it. A perfect way to boycott junk game publishers very conveniently without having to go back to stores and returning games.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Nobody wants DRM or Malware type software destroying their freedom to use PC's.
No software company wants to invest 30 million into a (small?) project where sales are predicted by a declining history and diminishing market, or perhaps could disappear given the alarming ability to download gigs of data in a day.
In a perfect world, they would produce X, you want X, you buy X.
In a semi-perfect world. People Copy X, like it, Buy X
In todays world, a bit more perfect: People who copy and don't buy X, wouldn't have bought it anyway. (so does this mean copying impacts software?)
What does happen. People want games, if copying didnt exist, they would buy them, prices would drop. However, peope who say they wouldn't have bought the game anyway, shouldn't have needed to copy it.
OK, that bit over: If you purchase games, do you put up with measures that, in the end, are there for your benefit, as a games consumer (i.e., if they did stop copying)
Perhaps the issue is not so clear cut as music (which has always been way overpriced and overcontrolled)
Computer games used to be 1.99 casettes, 4.99 etc... not they are 49.99 at tops. Considering lower costs of marketting, vast market size, limitless and cheap distribution (electronically) and cheaper CD/DVD case distribution, the companies hsould be able to create games which sell for less, and meets a price that brings more consumers.
Sometimes it is easier to copy a game than physically walk out and buy it. This is the mentality they are dealing with.
At the end of the day - don't steal from people, no matter how rich they are.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"PC games will never go away, but if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease."
I can see the the logic of this, but couldn't a capitalist argue that Piracy creates a new market force vaguely resembling competition. One could argue if that statement is true, that Piracy actually forces the Games makers not to put out wasteful crap like they all to often do (come on more than 50% are crap with no audience) and force them to make stuff live up to competition. IE, if the game sucks I'd probably pirate it, if its good then I'll drive to Software Etc and pick it up.
Of course one can urge that now the companies have to waste time and money on anti piracy software in the process and that there are games that would appear to have no audience but they create one. (Pokemon, Conker, etc, etc)
I hope the above is coherent, too late in the night to post, I just wanted to see what my thoughts would crop up.
forget it.
"copy protection is a necessary part of the publishing process"
Yah, and remember the dark ages, when only the church could copy? Well if corporations get their way, it'll be dark again soon. Thanks Abbie!
"We have to live with it, and I don't think it is going away."
No Abbie, I don't have to live with it because I never buy copy protected software. Period. Sorry, but it's a religious thing with me.
"but let's face it, publishers aren't stupid"
Yes, yes they are, and evil and greedy too. First off, they corrupt copyright so that it no longer does what the founding fathers intended. Then they use it to abuse the market in order to force consumers to pay excessive prices for poor quality games.
In my humble opinion, piracy is a direct and inevitable outcome strictly due to the lack of fairness in the intellectual property issue.
Corporations have perverted the process and most people are simply taking the most economical route to get what they want
From where I sit, all of this is because companies will not produce products as inexpensively as possible. Indeed, these companies would earn more if they simply lowered the price to a point were far more people could easily afford to buy their products. As it is, most software is simply not affordable unless you are fairly affluent. So yes, they, the software publishers, are stupid, and what's worse, they're incompetent and abusive.
Words to men, as air to birds.
if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy ... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease. Without a big market there can be no big budgets. No Doom 4, no Far Cry 2 and no Half-Life 3.
Ironically, auther was not able to come up with even one example wich is not sequel. Indsutry really have problem with creativity, piracy notwithstanding.
Yeah - I'll correct that.
Safedisk is a PAIN to implement.
It works by changing the geometry of the disc - the tracks are actally spread out more (it makes it look a bit like the gaps between songs on old vinyl disks)
Then it measures the TIME it takes the drive to seek across these areas compared to the time it takes to seek across normal areas.
Their driver is very flaky, due to the large numbers of strange drives it has to cope with. This in turn makes it very difficult to build a drive which co-operates with it reliably.
Most disks produced with safedisk are within the spec - the spec just says that the track density must lie within such and such limits (I'd have to look them up) - they are expected to vary due to quality of disk and so forth. They AREN'T expected to vary on a single disk (much) - but nothing says that they can't. So they are in the CD/DVD spec.
The audio protections usually used fall into two camps. The polite camp simply has an audio session and a data session, and relies upon windows preferring to show the user the data session. These are within the redbook spec, and easy to break.
The slightly dodgier protection issues the same track number to tracks in both sessions, and relies upon data drives mounting the last session first and audio drives mounting the first session first. This DOES break the redbook spec. Quite horribly.
Man at Computer: Hey...what the hell?
Dork Behind Him: What is the matter with you?
Chick: Looks like he ran afoul of Star Force's copyright protection!
Dork: Ha ha!
Chick: *snicker*
Man: Shut the hell up you two!
Dork: OMG YOUR MEGAHURTZ HAS BEEN STOL3D!!
Chick: All your CD-ROM belong to Star Force.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
1.make the games better so people are more inclined to pay for them
2.stop charging a fortune, the cheaper they are the more likely someone will buy them
3.include better stuff in the box (e.g. a printed manual, mabie a poster of the main character or something)
4.use CD keys for online access to play multiplayer games
5.make valid CD keys a requirement to access extra stuff (like how you need a vaid CD key to get onto the official Neverwinter Nights forums or how you need a valid CD key to install patches for some versions of Borland Delphi)
6.make it easier to get replacement disks if yours are damaged/scratched/unreadable (i.e. send us the broken disks and some small amount to cover postage and we will send you a new copy of the game). Obviously it wouldnt apply for older stuff that they dont have anymore...
7.in addition to a paper manual, how about a PDF manual straight on the CD so that when the paper manual goes missing, you have a replacement.
I used to have Sim City on the Amiga, it was a great game which had its own form of copy protection. It was a dark red/brown peice of paper with a series of numbers (in black) in a chart. It was designed this way so you couldn't photocopy it and there were too many numbers on the chart to practically write them all down. (Thank god i'm not colour blind)
My friend also had Sim City for the Amiga, but he got a copied/cracked version without the 'code check' process. Now I ended up getting a copy of his game since it didn't mean I had to deal with the annoying hard to read chart just to get into the game I had bought.
Summary: Pirate user no problems, Paying customer annoyed.
I reguraly crack the games I buy simply to save the CDs getting scratched, or even having to bother finding them, when I first heard of this type of copy protection I knew it was a vary bad thing.
It was a Raven Sheild patch that introduced a CD emulation check and stopped the game loading if it found anything.
Now imo that's very bad, software being designed pourposely to not work if other software is present. Imagine if MS added in a 'function' to stop Office working if you installed Mozilla for example, a lot of people would be pissed.
Acidentaly incompatability is one thing, but when it's by design, it is wrong on so man levels.
In the end people will be forced to pirate if they want to play a game regardless of their intentions to buy it or not.
Since drivers run at Ring 0, the driver could crash the OS kernel. And this could open the door for malicious code that crashes machines with games that have that driver.
Seems like a good first pass at reverse-engineering this driver would be to do the windows equivalent of strace/truss/tusc on it and see how the game communicates with the driver and what the driver says back.
I'm sure it wouldn't be as simple as that, they probably aren't "well-behaved" (which should me no WHQL for them). But if it were that simple, writing your own dummy driver that spoofs the game into thinking everything is hunky-dory would be trivial.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Thanks for the list. According to the interviewee, no StarForce games are cracked.
According to google, cracks appear to exist for:
Breed
Cycling Manager 3
Dead to Rights
Fire Department
Gangland
Korea Fogotten Conflict
Prince of Persia Sands of Time
Rally Championship Xtreme
Restaurant Empire
Runaway A Road Adventure
Soldiers Heroes of World War 2
Track Mania
XIII
X2 The Threat
Now, being that I don't want to get my system all infected with virus laden garbage, I'm not going to download any of the cracks I found. I wonder how many work? Perhaps none of them. Or perhaps they all do. In that case, We have a 58% success record. That's not worthy of saying your protection is crack proof, IMHO.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I would be quite happy to swap CDs/DVDs on a PC if the game could be played entirely from that disc. I am not happy about copying a couple of gigabytes of data to my hard disc, then inserting the CD every time I want to play.
If you're a games developer, choose one: Either require the CD to be inserted, but don't put anything other than savegames and other personalised data on my hard disc, or install to the hard disc, but don't require the CD. Whichever you choose, I'll be happy.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
Persistent rumours in the copy protection industry tells that the technology used in StarForce3 is actually reverse engineered from CD-Cops http://www.linkdata.com/index.htm#cdcops, by StarForce's russian team.
This is supposed to be one of the reasons the pricing of the StarForce3 systems does not reflect the perceived development costs for the technology.
My attitude is very simple. If some moronic game company is going to install drivers on my PC without even asking, and then try to tell me that I can't use their game on my PC because I have unusual hardware or unusual software running, then they can go fsck themselves. I'm one of the people who do actually buy games, but I'm damned if I'm going to bend over for these morons.
Seriously, almost every game I own I've ended up downloading a CD crack for because either it's far too much of a pain to have to find a particular CD just to play a game that's already on my hard drive, or their appallingly bad 'copy protection' crap doesn't work with my SCSI DVD drive. These people are fscking over their customers who actually pay for the games, and wondering why we stop buying them.
No game should ever, ever, ever install a driver on a PC without asking and without making clear on the box that they will be doing so. Some of us use our PCs for real work as well as games, and the last thing I want is some stupid 'copy protection' driver screwing up my system.
Copy/paste from www.theisonews.com
... Also kind of a cheap trick, it leaves me no doubt the creators themselves were/are hella good crackers.
.exe file - but that would take more work again.
Im by no means a l33t hax0r but I know my way around icing/dumping procedures and messed around with SF3 a bit.
First of all, whenever someone writes SF3 uses physical fingerprints, STOP READING - it DOES NOT, and yes a lot of wannabe experts will say that. If you wanna know how the SF3 discs are produced I can write another post here, but for now I'll tell you about the protection itself;
The Devil (=StarForce3) is INSANELY coded to avoid debugging, and by INSANELY I mean NOTHING COMES CLOSE : you can find over 200 RDTSCs on a SINGLE procedure. WTF is a RDTSC? Its an instruction to read the time stamp on the CPU, that is, they use it to MEASURE the amount of time some routine takes to complete: if you debug+trace the operations, stopping them before they are complete, the reply from the CPU will tell the app they are taking a long time to finish - and you get rebooted while the SF3 creators laugh at you.
The most low-level interrupts cant be traced as well since the SF3 driver replaces them with their own evil, custom, devilish, encrypted drivers - and thats where the problems for LEGIT buyers start, drivers messing around with system resources = always dangerous. Theres even a INT 2E routine used into SF3, thats an undocumented but widely known backdoor to run COMMAND.COM-based programs!!
What happens then is, one would actually need to recreate the drivers removing all those ( hundreds of ) evil anti-debugging checks - that would take a *LOT* of time/work already, considering the drivers are encrypted as and when executing - to ONLY THEN start working on breaking the games' protection itself. And for every new SF3 version/update/whatever ( = another game) , you would have to do everything again. Of course after ending up with a working crack, you can remove the "custom driver" thing and just emulate everything with an
Truth is, it becomes much more of a challenge than a way to play the game for free, since its much (much much) easier - even cheaper considering the hours a cracker would spend starforcing - to simply buy the damn original.
Yeah because since the days of my Sinclair Spectrum when we copied software from audio tape to tape the computer games industry has really shrunk.
FFS, How the hell do these people get away with nodding, looking thoughtful and saying these things in an erudite fashion?
Back in the day, in the UK you sold ONE copy of a game per school, that's it (yeah we were all funding terrorism back then too). Since then no industries have shrunken as a result... not the aerospace industry, not the catering industry and sure as hell not the software industry.
We could get all melodramatic and start considering papers by Gerring on propoganda and the manipulation of the masses... lets just consider one thing.
The cornerstone of all propoganda is a kernel of fear. If X is allowed to continue Y will happen.
If software piracy continues then the quality of computer games will suffer.... I'm 35 and I've been told that exact same line since I was 13. The exact same line. In 22 years I've come to the conclusion it's not true. It's propoganda, it's tapping into an unfounded fear in the audience.
I was told the same about tape recorders and the music industry. I was told the same about video tape and the movie/cinema industry... all in over 2 decades, untrue. Propoganda.
If somebody tells you the sky is falling in, don't just take their word for it, look up yourself at the sky and ask yourself if it looks as if the sky is falling in.
ALL COPY PROTECTION DOES IS INCONVENIENCE THE LEGITIMATE USER This is untrue. If you read this article by a developer for Spyro, Year of the dragon, their copy and crack protection schemes were able to prevent a crack from being released for over 2 months after the game came out. Such protection did not inconvinience legitimate users AT ALL. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01 .htm
I noticed on that list that there are several demos. It is completely unacceptable that a demo could install this dubious software, when it's distribution does not constitute piracy in anyone's terms. I hope these games give users a warning about what they are going to install.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Already installed. What's next? Booting directly from the game CD into a custom anti-piracy OS and disabling any access to Windows?
It's not "back to the future", it's "forward to the past".
Back in the early '80s I bought a game for the Apple ][ called "Wizardry". This game had an extremely delicate copy protection mechanism that depended on matching the speed of the disk to a timer. I used to play it on three or four different Apples at different times, and there were slight variations in the speed of the disks. After a while, I could no longer play the game except on one particular machine... the drive speed on that machine had apparently been changing slightly over time and the copy protection had adapted the floppy to it.
Eventually I went to one of the local pirates and did something I'd never done before... begged a cracked game off him. I actually had him copy a cracked version of Wizardry on top of my original diskette. It was the only way I could depend on being able to run it.
Seriously, in the not-too-distant future, I imagine the first thing I do after I buy a new game is to go download the pirated version.
"You're safe and sound now, back in good old 1982."
That was just unacceptable, so I did the only thing I could do to play the game I purchased: pirate it.
Try that in 10 years, or when Blizzard has passed through 5 different companies (it could happen). Or, if you want the fun and excitement now, try to get a replacement copy of Pirates! or, if you lost the code wheel, Starflight. It won't happen, even if you paid for the copy legit.
FYI, this list is misleading. I believe they are refering only to Starforce 3 when they claim the games aren't cracked. Most of those games use an earlier version of Starforce which was not nearly as tough, or only the European version uses Starforce 3. I own Trackmania, which was cracked for version 1.0. However, the US release is 1.25 and it is yet to be cracked. It's extremely annoying because even with the CD, sometimes Starforce takes upwards of 5 minutes to validate the CD on startup. In addition, the article is correct that the cracks are much more involved. The Trackmania 1.0 crack included 100+ files that had to be replaced. What's the incentive for a cracker to crack subsequent versions when they're so involved. Personally, I think the copy protection has hurt the game's sales in the US.
Not playing games is a sign of being an adult? I guess that's going to be some crushing news to my grandparents who still play bridge and scrabble on a near-daily basis.
Seriously, I can't stand self-righteous pricks who equate game-playing with immaturity. If you want to take life so seriously as to not allow yourself a bit of liesure time, go right ahead, but don't make the foolish mistake of taking a holier-than-thou attitude simply because you have some sort of bullshit hangup derived from Corithians 13:11 or some misguided belief that creative and imaginitve play is not as important for an adult as it is for a child.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Ok so one thing stuck out at me the second I read it.
""Games are crap so often I don't want to get ripped off" - try reading reviews and playing demos. Besides, good luck getting a car dealership to refund you your money after you so much as signed the contract, never mind drove the car. Not all that many goods can be used and returned for your money back."
Actually I do believe Saturn, at least here in Canada, offers a no questions asked 30 day period where you can return the car. I remember a commercial where a lady had lost her job and could no longer afford the car so she returned it to the dealership, but in the end wound up buying a Saturn again because of their great customer service.
Anyways, that's beside the point. Frankly, reviews and demos aren't always the best indicator of how "buy-worthy" a game is. There's several factors you cannot determine from a demo. You cannot tell the length of the game for example, or if it would have any replay value whatsoever. You also can't really tell, through a short demo, whether the game is overly repetitive for the entire length of the game or not. Reviews also are not a great indicator. There have been games entirely trashed by the industry for having less than stellar graphics and poor sound, but even though the gameplay was absolutely stellar, it still got a crappy review. It's very hard to find a review(er) that will exactly match your personal tastes.
I'm not condoning piracy, or stealing money from the developers, but frankly, the prices of games are too ridiculously high for a casual gamer, which is a vast majority of the market. Maybe publishers need to take a back seat to the developers and let the developers actually have a good chunk of the profit earned from game sales. After all, it is their work, and maybe if the publishers weren't so damn greedy, they'd earn a bit more money from it.
Folks, it is only a matter of time before StarForce disappear off the face of the planet.
Right off from the first question they start spewing garbage from a technical persepctive.
Drivers cannot stop SoftICE from working, at best they can try to be aware of it and try to malfunction when they detect its presence.
Drivers can be uninstalled (the easiest method being to simply delete the file). Furthermore any activity of their driver can be spoofed by a replacement driver that just says everything is ok.
Their driver is a simple Windows IFS driver that filters filesystem calls (so called IRPs), probably based on hardware/process name. The reason they mess up people's USB drives is because they mis-detect them.
On the surface, it appears it would take only a couple hours for an experienced IFS driver writer to completely bypass their driver (probably along the lines of letting the driver run but ensuring it never gets to see any of the file system calls).
I'm willing to bet the only reason none of the games shipped with their product have been cracked has to do more with the lack of popularity of the games then with the copy protection.