EA Hit with Class Action Lawsuit over Spore DRM

[Cutlass]

No. And prior to installing it I disconnected my modem until after the installation was complete and I had started playing a game. It looks like the only copy protection Civilization IV: Colonization has requires you to have the CD in the drive.

thanks

 

[SharpMango]

For the record, i absolutely ABHOR piracy. Especially in the field of computer games...
in the field of music, one has seen bands migrate to earning the majority of their income through live gigs and what have you (with increasing ticket prices etc)...
in the field of computer games, we just cant have this kind of scenario. If software is pirated successfully. If its cracked, whatever, in that case it is simply game over. There does definitely need to be a pretty decent way of ensuring that piracy does not proliferate.
HOWEVER, by EA taking such measures as these, for example to purposfully destroy the legal second hand market, is highly counter productive. EA needs the support of people like us to argue the moral case. If we have nothing to fight for, if EA doesnt take the moral high ground, then neither can we. Using anti-piracy software for other aims will only lower their credibility and in the long run, make people more accepting of purchasing pirated software...
This is bad bad bad...
And as someone who's been playing 'PC' games for 15 years plus, i dont want to see actions such as these destroy the PC games market.

 

[White Elk]

Too bad we can't combat digital piracy with the same lethal seriousness
that the Russians are others are combating piracy on the high seas.

Somali pirates grab Ukrainain ship loaded with tanks ~ Reuters

 

[Spitefire]

You are Insane you want to commit murder over something as trivial as that, I know should we also kill people for Plagiarism aswell, right? or mebey when you see someone useing a copy machine should we knife them?

Here is the problem other then the fact that your are insane for wanting to wantonly murder people.

If there are veary few Computer pirates then thay wont have an effect, if there are many then then not only are you commiting another WW2 style mass murder, you also support the idea of the common man/woman haveing no say at all in the market, things like Computer piracy only fair well in a disfunctional system so murder is not going to fix it you will only make bigger problems because there is alot of normal people that share information on the web and if you have not been totally brainwashed into believing that all of them need to die then i think you need to rephrase how you go about talking lest someone take you seriously.

If you are really willing and able to kill 1 million or more then i would judge you a threat to human life, if you are unwilling or unable then Dont ask others to do what you are incapable of doing yourself it just makes you look like a loud mouth.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

I'll be following this lawsuit with great interest.

 

[White Elk]

No I didn't say the penatly should be death. I didn't even intend to say that resistance to law enforcement (from digital pirates) should necessarily bring mortal response (unless met with mortal resistance). What I was getting at is that it takes a big commitment on part of the Russian government to deploy warships and other limited resources to combat the crime of naval piracy. Russias deployment of war resources (while still on the edge of with war in Georgia and its allies, along with being involved with cold war postering against other nations,) is a clear display of taking the problem seriously. If that level of seriousness and commitment was applied to digital piracy (in its own situational context), then perhaps piracy would be on the decline and not on the rise.

[/END]

 

[Dom Pedro II]

You are Insane you want to commit murder over something as trivial as that, I know should we also kill people for Plagiarism aswell, right? or mebey when you see someone useing a copy machine should we knife them?

Here is the problem other then the fact that your are insane for wanting to wantonly murder people.

If there are veary few Computer pirates then thay wont have an effect, if there are many then then not only are you commiting another WW2 style mass murder, you also support the idea of the common man/woman haveing no say at all in the market, things like Computer piracy only fair well in a disfunctional system so murder is not going to fix it you will only make bigger problems because there is alot of normal people that share information on the web and if you have not been totally brainwashed into believing that all of them need to die then i think you need to rephrase how you go about talking lest someone take you seriously.

If you are really willing and able to kill 1 million or more then i would judge you a threat to human life, if you are unwilling or unable then Dont ask others to do what you are incapable of doing yourself it just makes you look like a loud mouth.

Decaf. Switch to decaf.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

No I didn't say the penatly should be death. I didn't even intend to say that resistance to law enforcement (from digital pirates) should necessarily bring mortal response (unless met with mortal resistance). What I was getting at is that it takes a big commitment on part of the Russian government to deploy warships and other limited resources to combat the crime of naval piracy. Russias deployment of war resources (while still on the edge of with war in Georgia and its allies, along with being involved with cold war postering against other nations,) is a clear display of taking the problem seriously. If that level of seriousness and commitment was applied to digital piracy (in its own situational context), then perhaps piracy would be on the decline and not on the rise.

[/END]

Well, Congress is working on legislation that would place all the legal actions being taken by media producers and organizations like the RIAA and putting into the hands of the Department of Justice. This would effectively make the DOJ the personal lawyers of the music and movie industry. The Bush Administration has come out strongly against this legislation saying that these companies already have the tools they need to defend their intellectual property rights and that taking on this enormous problem would divert DOJ's attention away from prosecuting more serious crimes.

The problem with digital piracy is that, for a large part of it, we're not talking about large underground operations. We're talking about individual people doing things that, on an individual level, are fairly harmless, but when multiplied by tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people can lead to many millions of dollars in losses for these companies.

This is the reason why I say it's such a mess. Because I think people have a right to make money, but I also know that the only way to keep things the way it used to be would be to have the FBI knocking down people's doors every time they downloaded a song without permission or installed a game on a friend's computer, and I can certainly say I don't want to live in that world...

But I've also seen the other side of the coin too. Brazil's gaming industry has largely ground to a halt because of piracy. Piracy is big business there. You can actually go into stores and see nothing but wall-to-wall pirated DVDs, video games and music CDs. 9 out of every 10 games in Brazil are pirated. As a result, companies like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have no reason to sell their console systems there because they make their money off the games not the systems. In fact, IIRC Sony loses money on every PS3 they sell (or at least they did last I heard). It's the games where they make their money, but if 90% of the games on the market are stolen, why in the world would you want to sell the systems at all? So that coupled with a 60% import tax has lead to PS2's (PS2!!) today costing over $1,000 American in Brazil. A PS3 is double that at least.

Intellectual property rights and an individual's private property rights are inversely proportional. The more rights you give to the one, you necessarily take from the other. So you're not buying the game, you're buying the right to use the game... and if EA decides to take away that right from you at any point, they can. Yet you paid money for something you thought you were going to own. It would be like if you bought a Ford, and you did something Ford didn't like, and you woke up in the morning to find they'd taken the engine out of your car because, since they own the patent on it, you simply paid them to use it. Move to either extreme in the spectrum, and the economy seizes up. Take away the rights of the producers, and they will either A) go out of business or B) stop producing the products you want and switch to something safer. Take away the rights of the consumers, and we're back to the feudal era where the peasants live in constant fear of being held hostage to the whims of the nobles... and the consumers will stop buying. The key is to find the right balance.

 

[Puppeteer]

Ah crap. When I heard the game had DRM I was confusing SecuRom with SafeDisc. SafeDisc is annoying but sometimes toleraboe. I'm ticked at myself for getting SecuRom on my system. I may seriously reinstall Vista. I wanted my new PC to be secure for ME, not for Sony and EA.

 

[White Elk]

I wanted my new PC to be secure for ME, not for Sony and EA.

LoL... Brilliant!

 

[Newbunkle]

I'll be following this lawsuit with great interest.

Same here. All pirates are gutless thieves, and I'd love to see piracy stamped out (at least as much as possible), but this kind of copy protection is revolting. I was really looking forward to Spore as well. Maybe if they release a gold version in future without this style of DRM I'll buy it.

 

[Falcon02]

wait......are they going to be using the same system on Red Alert 3???

Yes they are, hopefully though EA will change their minds, especially given this lawsuit and go with Traditional CD-Key + CD in drive DRM check for Red Alert 3.

 

[Munch]

Ah crap. When I heard the game had DRM I was confusing SecuRom with SafeDisc. SafeDisc is annoying but sometimes toleraboe. I'm ticked at myself for getting SecuRom on my system. I may seriously reinstall Vista. I wanted my new PC to be secure for ME, not for Sony and EA.

Same. Is there really no way to get rid of it short of reformatting?

 

[Macha]

I suppose this is one aspect of this issue. How can you agree to something which isn't spelled out at time of purchase. And if after purchase, during install, you discover aspects of that contract for which you won't submit to... then will you be able to return the game for full refund even though the software functions properly.. albiet maliciously? From reading about peoples attempts to return Civ4, I've been under the impression that retailers will not refund unless the game does not run?

In Ireland, retailers do not take back PC games at all, broken or not.

 

[Murky]

Same. Is there really no way to get rid of it short of reformatting?

There may be a way but you would need a root-kit removal tool and you would probably have to reinstall windows over top the existing installation. I think there is a way you can just restore your kernel and system files if you have the Windows XP Cd but then you might as well just reinstall to be sure.