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Two New Class-Action Suits Against EA Over DRM
In September, we discussed a class-action suit filed against Electronic Arts over the DRM in Spore. Now, two new class-action suits have been filed that target the SecuROM software included in a free trial of the Spore Creature Creator (PDF) and in The Sims 2: Bon Voyage (PDF). If this sort of legal reprisal continues to catch on, EA could be seeing quite a few class-action suits in the future. One of the suits accuses:
"The inclusion of undisclosed, secretly installed DRM protection measures with a program that was freely distributed constitutes a major violation of computer owners' absolute right to control what does and what does not get loaded onto their computers, and how their computers shall be used ... [SecuROM] cannot be completely uninstalled. Once installed it becomes a permanent part of the consumer's software portfolio ... EA's EULA for Spore Creature Creator Free Trial Edition makes utterly no mention of any Technical Protection Measures, DRM technology, or SecuROM whatsoever."
The problem is that I don't believe the article, because it's written by someone totally clueless as to how his own computer works.
Interfering with the firewall? It made an internet request, and the firewall popped up an accept/reject box. That's exactly what it's supposed to do (internet authentication), and the firewall is working exactly as it should.
It hides a folder in Application Data? Try this on for size: the Application Data folder is hidden by default. Furthermore, the files in the Application Data \ SecuROM folder have a README.txt explaining exactly what they are and what they are used for.
It disables Process Explorer? No it doesn't. It doesn't let you run the game until you reboot if you have run an old version of Process Explorer, and that was fixed a long time ago (by Microsoft) as of Process Explorer v11.
The only thing that site has under Player Stories is a bunch of people saying things like "My XXX software doesn't work or is buggy! I blame SecuROM!". The claims (it disabled my antivirus! my hard drives crashed and my dvd phyiscally broke!) border on hysteria and don't offer any more solid proof.
All I want is someone to actually look at the SecuROM protection that comes with Spore or Mass Effect and then tell me why it is bad, without falling back on "I heard that SecuROM does terrible things!"