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[troop18546]

Actually, people are boikoting copy protections (Starforce) and not buying the game. They know they'll be screwed if they get a scratch on the CD and the company won't compensate them.
StarForce says:

Game has to be (blah blah blah) in price (not cheaper);
No more than 3 months old;
You pay some amount of money for the replacement;
Other sh*t, which I forgot;

Who would want to risk all this?
People can just find it, download it (not a CD, just an image) and play the heck out of it, NO SCRATCHES. That's why warez is so popular over the net. :whistle:

[plix]

Originally posted by troop18546@Mar 21 2006, 10:44 AM
Everything has flaws, but it IS the best on the market after all.
I only seen 1 glitch in it, but it took these "illegalists" a friggin YEAR to figure that out. Next version patches that up and no problemo. It takes SFN and to unhook cables to go around this copy protection and technically, that's not a flaw in the software...
I don't think there's any prog on the market that could beat this one.

There's a major downside to that, however: the security of the solution (StarForce, Macrovision, SecuROM or whatever) is positively correlated with how much trouble it causes legitimate users. Pirates simply don't have to worry about all that garbage.

The only 100% secure protection mechanism is one which prevents any use whatsoever, including legitimate. So long as you are able to play the game someone will be able to crack it.

Originally posted by Tulac
Back up copies are still legal, aren't they? Although there are laws that'll change that too...

They are and they aren't. The U.S.'s DMCA (don't worry, the EU is working on it's own version) outlaws overcoming DRM such as StarForce to make personal backups (which are, ironically, explicitly legalized in the same document).


DRM is starting to get out of hand and it's to the point that it's starting to do real, measurable harm to users (e.g. Sony's XCP). At the same time, rather than protecting the rights of the consumer most governments are making strides to not only protect the corporations, but to outlaw any effort of the consumer to protect themselves.

[troop18546]

Hellyeah, plix. But StarForce doesn't say how you can make your even legal copies. That's just ripping people (including me) off. :not_ok: