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Lawsuit Against Ubisoft for Starforce
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."
"For example, here's one of the common problems brought by Starforce: under Windows XP, if packets are lost during the reading or writing of a disk, XP interprets this as an error and steps the IDE speed down. Eventually it will revert to 16bit compatibility mode rendering a CD/DVD writer virtually unusable. In some circumstances certain drives cannot cope with this mode and it results in physical hardware failure (Most commonly in multiformat CD/DVD writer drives). A sure sign of this step down occurring is that the burn speeds will get slower and slower (no matter what speed you select to burn at). Starforce, on a regular basis, triggers this silent step down. Until it reaches the latter stages most people do not even realise it is happening."
Proof? Out-of-specs equipment? (remember the problem one of the linux distros had).
Such a fuss...all because he wants to play without the disk.
Just get a crack for it like the rest of us!
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
5M? Ubisoft sold a lot more kit than that. What is the damage going to be - 5$ off Splinter Cell Double Agent for us, 4M to the lawyers? Would be nice to see some of these machine horking protection schemes get held to the same 'criminal' behavior like deleting files or defacing websites...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
"Such a fuss...all because he wants to play without the disk. Just get a crack for it like the rest of us!"
.EXE files.
I don't think you fully understand what StarForce is. Only a couple StarForce games have ever been cracked - and it isn't just swapping out a couple
You need to physically unhook *all* of your optical drives and run an emulator that seriously hits system performance. UBI has released this with their Splinter Cell series - and for the most part it worked. Troubleshooting costs are way higher than normal but I know a ton of people who don't ever buy games that bought these.
Less lawsuits, more *EFFECTIVE* boycotts. And no, I'm not talking about half-hearted "boycotts," where idiot gamers with no self-control warez the hell out of a title that's supposed to be boycotted, only to serve as proof that publishers need to use copy protection. I'm talking about shutting out all purchases, downloads, and even positive discussion about a boycotted title.
It would certainly not be a trivial effort to organize something like this. But it would be better proof to the publishers that we don't necessarily need what they have to offer us. They provide us with services and products (luxuries, at that) that we can choose to buy. Don't tattle to mommy government so she can slap the publishers on the wrist and leave them looking for different means to screw you. Just starve them straight. If gamers can't do this, that's just proof that publishers can do whatever they want to you.
After all, we are not talking about (sigh) Windows, which someone might actually need for some reason. These are *games*.
This is taken right from Wikipedia:
StarForce has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers. Some users claim that the StarForce drivers can cause optical drives to fail, which has been investigated by the popular American magazine Computer Gaming World. CGW states that under certain circumstances StarForce will cause Windows to access optical drives in Programmed input/output mode which causes the drive to be accessed far more slowly, potentially causing problems. StarForce developers responded to these findings, stating "The issue on StarForce is obviously sponsored by our competitors or organized crime groups that run CD/DVD piracy operations. We are now in close cooperation with US and Russian officials investigating the matter and trying to find out who stands behind the boycott campaign". When faced with criticism on the internet, StarForce officials are known to threaten with legal action and contact with the FBI, though the extent to which these threats have been pursued remain doubtful. StarForce's developers claim that their EULA absolves them from any responsibility for problems that their software may cause [3]. Supporters of StarForce argue that the stability problems were exaggerated and have been resolved in newer versions of StarForce.
StarForce copy protection software also forces users to completely wipe and reinstall their partitions if they wish to remove the copy protection software. The protection will also write to any shared network drives that have full read / write access, causing problems for other users on the network.
A large number of gamers have advocated boycotts of games or publishers known to use StarForce. On 30th January 2006 Boing Boing, a popular weblog, labelled Starforce as malware, alleging several problems associated with the protection system, including disk drive performance degradation, weakening of operating system security and stability. A day later on January 31, 2006 Boing Boing received an email from Starforce, threatening legal action and stating that the article was "full of insults, lies, false accusations and rumors". CNET also ran a similar story, and has received similar [email]. However, Protection Technologies have never proven these claims are false.
On 5th March 2006, a StarForce employee posted a link [4] to an illegal download source of Galactic Civilizations 2, a game developed by StarDock which does not use copy protection. Starforce later issued an apology for this act [5], after it received a great deal of attention on the internet.
More info at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starforce
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
"What you reap is what you sow".
I hope it stops these practices, I've held off from purchasing quite a few games because I'm not sure starforce is trustworthy and I'm VERY sure that I as a legitimate customer do not tolerate being treated like a criminal. Well, actually the criminals get treated much better since the warez versions usually remove such inconveniences completely. "Here's your reward for purchasing our software instead of downloading: A worse user experience! Isn't that great?"
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Just because I put a lable on my product saying I am not responsible for damages caused by it, doesn't make it so. Its all up to the court system to see just how far EULAs can go.
They offered $10,000 reward and all-expenses paid round-trip to moscow to their headquarters, if you could replicate situation where starforce actually did some damage to optical drives.
No, the deal was that you flew out to Moscow at your own expense to demonstrate it. And then they decide whether to award you the prize based on their rules. Also note that the vast majority of people aren't complaining that it physically damages their CD drives. They are complaining about system instability, poor performance and the gaping fucking security hole that Starforce opens on your PC*.
I'm sure that you totally misrepresented the "competition" rules by accident. Everyone knows Starforce are above planting paid shills on forums.
* The Starforce driver can elevate user processes to Ring 0**.
** That's what we call a rootkit.
In a legal sense it really doesn't matter what is in the EULA, grated it helps, but you can't do something illegal even if you declare in in the EULA.
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For one, most of the time EULAs are not legal contracts, and even if they met the legal 'requirements' you cannot have a contract for something that is illegal.
http://www.okratas.com/modules.php?op=modload&nam
Lawsuits such as this are totally justified. It's intentional asshattery. There is nothing frivolous about this.
The only time a lawsuit is stupid is when someone sues over something that is, at worst, an accident. Malpractice, McDonald's hot coffee, etc.
But McDonald's hot coffee was a real problem.
What most people don't know want to admit is that the hot coffe suite wasn't about someoen spilling coffe, it was about a company serving coffe that was too hot for the cups they served it in. Yes, the coffee was so hot it melted the cups and caused the lids to come off. After recieving many complaints about it at that particular (yes it was only one store serving it this hot too) store, a customer suffered third degree burns on thier crotch and leg areas.
MCdonalds offered a free coffee replacment after being told about it. after seeking treatment, MCdonalds offered some small amount of money. Thats when she decided to sue for medical bills and this store offered a settlement of some low amount that wouldn't even pay for the drugs. The lawsuite was originaly for medical bills but when the jurry found that the store has paid medical claims in the past over the exact same complaints that specificaly claimed the lid to the coffee cup melted off and caused the spill, they decided the company was purposley serving a faulty and dangerous product and riased the punitive damages.
Of course on apeal, the judgment was lowered to a number more closly resembling the original requested amount. It wasn't frivilous by anymeans except maybe the jurry's huge sum of money they awarded to punish MCdonalds.
Now, malpractice.. This is a fun subject for several reasons. I specificaly know a person that suffered from malpractice. He had an operation on his heart to fix a valve when he was little (about 10-13 years of age). The breast plate didn't grow back properly and cause the r ibcage to slip under the one side and protrude inot his heart. The fix was to cut the sternum back on both sides do somethign to the bones and re attach them properly. This is were the malpractice comes in. The doctor who decided to scheldule a vacation the next day after open heart surgury,felt rushed by his plans and instead of cutting both side as they explained the operation or e ven performing the operation as the "plan" called for too some shortcuts. First they only cut one side, second instead of trimming out the exccess material that grew form t he first botch repair, they re wired the ribcage under the breastplate in a position that opened the lungs up a little. Then he rewired the sternum shut at an angle that caused inability to stand up straight. Of course claiming the entire poeration had been done as they initialy claimed it was, the coverup causes the therope to work on standing straight wich caused the wires to break and the ribs to seperate again. Now because it was easier to slop the poeration and keep the vacation plans, i have a 26 year old friend who has wires sticking into his lungs causing breathing problems. Ribs abd sternum plates resting directly on his heart and if he moves too suddenly,he has shooting pain that mimics a heart attack two years after the operation. To make things worse, when the wires broke, and when the ribs fell again, and when the sternuum droped onto the heart, the doctors said that it was normal and he would get used to it in time. To make things even worse, knowing this was going on, the doctors saw that the insurance was starting to run past the amount of time aloted for recovery and sent him back to work as an automechanic were he couldn't use his arms above his chest without lots of pain and got laid off because he couldn't perform his job. (now without insurance at all) It is almost as if they tried to make him broke so he didn't have enough money to get a lawer.
If a lawsuite over that malpractice is firvolous, then I say we need more of them. This isn't a surgeon forgeting to remove all his tools. Although i would consider that malpractice too. I have seen people fired for leaving tools at job sites. This isn't some mild mistake either, it is a surgeon who deliberatly changed the operation so he didn't miss the flight to cancoon.