Completely Biased

I have to admit, I am a gamer. I play way too many games for my own good, and because of that I keep my eye on things in the tech markets a great deal. Today’s debate is about whether or not companies should be able to protect thier software at the cost of stability and safety of consumer’s electronics. We will of course be naming a major player in this field which sparked my little red button.

Now, a few people might be asking, “What is StarForce?” It’s a little complicated, so stick with me. StarForce is an encryption tool used by mostly distributors to prevent any copying of thier game disks. (However there are some exceptions by law I want to point out before we are done.) This works by having the StarForce drivers installed covertly on a consumer’s computer, and is used without knowledge of the user untill the key is needed for authorization.

Now, usually I don’t have a problem with copy protection, except when there is an issue involving consumer’s rights. This system installs itself without an End User Liscence Agreement (EULA) and also can open up your computer to various attacks. Now I’ve looked at some more information, and tried to research as best I can, and pretty much it has come back to the same thing, StarForce, although with good intentions ends up tainting it’s purity by those security flaws and hidden installation.

Worse yet is that this company has actively attempted to press lawsuits and investigations on individuals speaking out about this product. For example at BoingBoing.net the author that wrote the peice about the StarForce product recieved an E-mail telling the author that his editorial was meant as “Harrasment“! Now, I don’t know about you, but when it comes to opinions and things like that, I don’t see how any international company should, and has the right to sue someone for opinions that happened to be backed up by fact. The technical specs were outlined by BoingBoing about how exactly this protection works, but in the end it comes down to the question:

How far can copyprotection companies, publishers, and distributors go to protect thier intellectual property, while at the same time destroying consumer’s rights?

I understand this is still an old issue. (BoingBoing’s report is from January), however it is still a major problem even more-so with Sony’s attempt at a protection scheme that installed rootkits (as far as I can tell, it is effectively the same thing as StarForce or has the same result as StarForce, just without the nice image that shows up when validating a key), leaving computers vulnerable.

Debate this, and let me know what you guys think! Should companies have the right to protect thier property, and to what extent? Should consumers have thier consumer rights (such as having one LEGAL backup copy [This is the exception I talked about]) available to them, or infringed on by the need to protect retail products?

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