[impic0]

Hi, I just wanted to use this place to comment on all those Starforce hatemail and boycott requests.

It is true and I fully agree, that a copy protection should never go that deep into you operating system (using own drivers) and in no case it should disallow other software running. I totally agree with you in that point.

But somehow I see even more people complaining about Starforce, because it seems to be the only copy protection that really works. It is actually the first copy protection that makes it (almost) impossible to play for people not owning the original. I bet half of the people here actually hate Starforce, because they can't play their downloaded games anymore. And I respect the developers of Starforce for their work. One could argue about the way they achieved that, but they did it.

Usually, publishers spent a lot of money on copy protection for one or two days until it was cracked, but Starforce changed this. So I ask you: Is all we can do about that is starting petitions, complaing again and again and celebrate each game which is not protected by Starforce? Why don't we just try to crack it like it's always been done? Where are all those skilled people? Do you really give up? When I look the web for Starforce reverse engineering papers or information, I can only find a few. Why is that? Nothing is impossible. If the software runs on your computer with the original, then you can make it work without the original. That's a fact. And that's what should be our point of interest. If we can't crack it alone, then maybe we have to work together and share what we found out about it.

Even if we get all the publishers to not use Startforce anymore, the day will come when there's a new protection, maybe even a "clean" one. Will we try to find some things in it that we disagree with, so that we can boycott it again? Or will we try to crack it?