[TippeX]

Originally Posted by SuspiciousJedi

If I bought the game why it would be illegal to play it without the CD in the drive? Do you understand how the law works? Basic principle of law and justice says that everyone is innocent until (or unless) proven otherwise.

>> unless you are american ;p and yep i understand how the law works, far too well

What this whole game copy protection scam and not just Starforce does is twisting the way the law and justice usually works into completely OPPOSITE scheme -- you are guilty unless you can prove you are innocent by having the CD in the drive. That is rediculous.

>> agreed, but short of online authentication the only 'sure' way they know you have the game is to 'force' you to have the cd/dvd rom in the drive

You got me wrong again -- I do not want to debug their drivers, I want to be able to debug apps and drivers I wrote and I can't while Starforce is installed because it prevents any kind of debugging.

>> hmm just tested that and you appear to be wrong i had no problems loading softice with the starforce drivers loaded, it only ****s up when you load a starforce game and the drivers then get activated

Maybe they don't have it YET, maybe it has to interface so what?

In my view the main problem is that Starforce has unsupervised access to whole physical memory space because it is a kernel driver running in ring0. That means it could write into firewall memory space. That means it could also patch into other drivers. That means it could snoop and/or steal sensitive data such as credit-card numbers from your RAM and disclose it to the third party. It could open so much hated popup windows and waste your bandwidth on downloading targeted ads without you having any way of stopping it.

I am not saying it is doing it right now, just that it is possible and if we allow this we can expect to see those scenarios in the near future. There are already plans to display ads in games while you play, google for it.

>> yep anythings possible agreed, but its probably best to wait for it to happen and then deal with it as opposed to trying a pre emtive move

What we have here is a double standard -- publishers do not trust their customers treating them as thieves until proven otherwise and at the same time they expect from customers to cast aside all doubts about publisher's "honest" intentions meaning that we should treat them as honest until someone proves otherwise. Shouldn't law be equally applied to everyone?

>> the law works for the industry, not the end user, that much can be seen from how many new laws have been introduced

Hooks must be global so it can hide itself. My issue list sorted by order of importance is:

- privacy
- stability
- performance

Second and third options can be tuned over time but IMO they should not be our primary concern. People give up on privacy and control over their own stuff too easily when they should fight for all they are worth for.



WHQL is optional but products using non-certified drivers cannot get "Designed for Windows" logo. Consider this scenario:

You go out and buy video card. Being a product which has passed WHQL certification it rightfully carries "Designed for Windows" logo because it comes with signed drivers. In the package you also get a bundled game or a demo protected with Starforce.

Real problem here is that by including unsigned Starforce drivers in the bundle, video card OEM does not qualify for that "Designed for Windows" logo anymore. You have based your buying decisions upon logo existance so both the OEM and you are screwed.

yep cavat emptor aint it