Slashdot Mirror
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).
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*.
It's not like it's that hard to change disks. You hit the little Eject button, take out the disk already there, and put in the new one. Easy
There's a probability of scratching each time. It also drains battery on laptops.
When games first started coming out on CD, they all required you to have the game disk in the drive. Yet people didn't complain.
And you couldn't blow 640 MB * num cds in drive space on a whim then either.
The requirement to change disks hasn't stopped people from playing console games.Hell, some games require you to change disks while the game is still playing! Yet, no one minds.
Consoles are not general purpose machines. Why shouldn't someone be able to play a CD while playing a game?
The whole "steal the game to avoid having to use the disk" has got to be one of the lamest excuses for theft ever.
If you've bought the game, how is it stealing to use the crack?
I'll never understand the "I steal so I can play without the disk!" mentality that some people have. It's not like it's that hard to change disks. You hit the little Eject button, take out the disk already there, and put in the new one. Easy. If you have time to play an hour or two in a video game, you have time to take the five seconds to change disks.
It's not like it's a new thing, either. When games first started coming out on CD, they all required you to have the game disk in the drive. Yet people didn't complain.
The requirement to change disks hasn't stopped people from playing console games. Hell, some games require you to change disks while the game is still playing! Yet, no one minds.
The whole "steal the game to avoid having to use the disk" has got to be one of the lamest excuses for theft ever. "See, judge, I wanna make my life slightly more convenient, at the cost of Ubisoft's business."
This "case" is going to be laughed out of court.
It has nothing to do with switching CD's. I'll gladly play a game that needs the CD to start up, like Oblivion. What I don't want is Starforce on my machine. At all.
Why? Again, it has nothing to do with piracy or switching disks or any of that. Starforce screwed up my machine. I bought "Silent Hunter III", a sub simulation, and installed it on my computer. But I noticed that after a while, the entire computer started acting sluggish in normal activities....even though it's a Dual-core 4200+ with 2 gigs of RAM and it wasn't sluggish before. Rebooting seemed to make it worse, yet I couldn't see any activity or stolen CPU cycles or any of that. And I run a very clean system.
Anyway, it was acting sluggish. But that wasn't even the half of it, when I went to make a CD this past Christmas to take to my in-laws of Christmas music (mainly of Tiny Tim singing carols....drives my mother-in-law crazy...but that's another story). I found nothing would burn on my burner. Then my son told me that he couldn't play his older game he liked anymore because it would launch, then just shut down. It was an older game from a few years ago, and it was working fine just a week earlier.
To make a long story longer...I finally tracked down that all of this started happening AFTER I installed "Silent Hunter III" on my computer. I did some research online and found out all about Starforce and it's drivers. I found the Starforce removal tool and WHAM, like magic, everything started working again. But I hear that I was lucky because some people's CD drives are sometimes permanently screwed, though I don't know how.
THAT is why I'm all for this lawsuit. I don't care about any money, just want Starforce to go away.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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.