Ubisoft’s DRM scheme may have angered the wrong group of people, as the software publisher’s servers were attacked again last night.

The company, who also experienced attacks on their servers over the weekend, took to their Twitter account “about 19 hours ago” (in Twitter time) to announce, “Our servers are under attack again. Some gamers are experiencing trouble signing in. We're working on it and will keep you posted.”

About five hours ago the company reported that, “Login servers were partially reestablished at 10pm CET and fully restored at 1am CET. The attack affected only those trying to login.”

Ubisoft’s new DRM scheme, which requires a constant Internet connection to authenticate game sessions, had a bit of a hick up this weekend.

Ubi posted to its Twitter feed this morning apologizing to “anyone who couldn’t play ACII [Assassin’s Creed II] or SH5 [Silent Hunter 5] yesterday.” While the company originally blamed the outage on “exceptional demand,” Ubi stated on its Twitter feed that their servers were “attacked, which limited service from 2:30pm to 9pm Paris time.”

Ubisoft added that “95% of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors.”

Joystiq also points us towards a thread on the Ubisoft forums in which the affected “5%” voice their displeasure.

GP: On a related note, I grabbed Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for the PC this weekend and during the install was prompted to choose my favored method of DRM—disc-based or online authentication (I chose disc-based). In a perfect world there would be no need for DRM, but if it is required, this method of offering the user a choice at least goes a little way towards lessening the impact (and might make DRM-based gaming functionable on an Army base or a cruise ship). Bad Company 2 uses Sony’s SecuROM technology.

As another aside, while the DRM tech worked fine, Bad Company 2 had its own online problems for a little bit yesterday, though their issues appeared to be Punkbuster-related.


|Thanks PHX Corp and DarkSaber!|

Ubisoft is denying claims that their new (and controversial) DRM technology has been breached by crackers.

CVG (via Kotaku) received a message from Ubisoft, which was responding to rumors that their just-released Silent Hunter 5 PC game had already been hacked. “You have probably seen rumors on the web that Assassin's Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 have been cracked,” wrote the company, continuing, “Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete.”

The message was also echoed on Ubi’s Twitter feed.

Cracked versions of the submarine game on torrent and file-sharing websites appear with instructions that users must only “Install game and copy crack, it’s that simple!”

Ubisoft’s DRM technology requires a constant connection to the Internet and has been the object of scorn from gamers around the world.

Additionally, while Ubisoft’s Assasin’s Creed 2 won’t be available to PC users until March 16, ShackNews already has an update for the game available, one that alters files to enable gamers to pick up where they left off in the game in the event of an Internet disconnection. Previous reports on Ubi’s DRM tech indicated that any disconnection from the Web while playing would result in a player losing all current progress and see them forced to pick up playing from their last save file.


Thanks E. Zachary Knight!

Last week we covered an interesting article from Ars Technica that focused on the problems videogame DRM technology can have on soldiers stationed overseas.

Yet another group of gamers impacted by DRM? Cruise ship workers.

GP received an email from the Chief Officer of a cruise ship, who prefers to remain nameless, detailing the problems DRM can inflict on those living at sea:

… we quite often don't have a good Internet connection or it's cost prohibitive, especially on our personal computers. I watch movies and play games during my, albeit limited, time off. There have been many games that I have been unable to play because of DRM issues, games such as Spore & recently Empire: Total War caused me huge problems simply because it required an Internet connection during installation. I had to spend $120 USD on Internet charges just for the privilege of installing Empire: Total War.

Is our Chief Officer alone in his problems with DRM? Not by a long shot. He continued:

I know of 40 other crew on my ship who regularly play games in their time off, this is a ship with only 217 crew. That's nearly 20% of the crew. I realize this is a very small sample, but it could lead to a large number of people who can't play games in the entire shipping industry. Crew would also be more inclined to play cracked/pirated games to get through this DRM issue. I would buy the real game regularly, if I knew that I could play on my ship regardless of where I was. It's gotten to the point where I don't play PC games anymore, because so many have these, or similar problems requiring the internet.

As Ubisoft’s recent struggle with DRM technology brings the subject back into the limelight again, the always excellent Ars Technica has an article up exploring how DRM can impact a specific group of gamers—soldiers stationed overseas.

A soldier now stationed in Iraq detailed his experiences with DRM, saying his experiences with the technology have ranged from “annoying to unforgivable,” though he called Valve’s Steam platform “pretty awesome” when it came to working with deployed military personnel in order to ensure that they have access to their games.

The unnamed soldier on his experiences with other companies and services:

I've had hit and miss success with some of the other download companies. Any kind of game that tries to call home, though, is generally more of a problem than it is worth. Especially ones that try to resolve your IP address with your version/purchase location.

On-base Internet connectivity can very spotty and expensive, adding to the headache of playing a game with DRM that phones home constantly. The soldier said that the “government sponsored Internet” features severe bandwidth caps, while civilian Internet is extremely expensive—the soldier pays $150.00 a month for a 192K connection.

Ars added its own thoughts on DRM:

This sort of DRM makes sense for a world where every device is always connected to some magically open and always-on Internet connection. That world is a very long way away, so by requiring an Internet connection at all times to play a game that isn't online itself is simply alienating an audience.

Ubisoft recently detailed the specifics of their new DRM scheme, which requires a constant internet connection to merely be able to play the games. Understandably, gamers are upset that a momentary internet connection hiccup can result in losing unsaved game progress mid-session -- even in single-player mode.

Instead of whining about it on the internet, however, game journalist Lewie Procter of SavyGamer is deciding to fight back in the form of a "reverse boycott". In essence, Procter wants people to buy the game en masse, then return the game unopened and untouched at the end of the valid refund period, explaining that they find the game's DRM to be unacceptably restrictive. In theory, the protesters will receive a full cash refund (at Tesco, a UK retailer) and Ubisoft will feel the burn from the retail outlet.

Negative Gamer has already signed on in support of the protest. However, it's unlikely to catch on as well in the US, where many retailers have significant restrictions on refunds for games.

GP: While the intentions are good, I fear that the reverse boycott will ultimately be ineffective. Even if there is an unusually large response, the dollar amount is simply not going to be enough to make Tesco or Ubisoft take notice. But the attempt is far from useless. Negative public backlash has proven helpful, perhaps instrumental, in changing restrictive DRM schemes in the past. Simply bringing attention to the issue could be Procter's greatest success.
 

Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

Ubisoft’s new DRM technology, which requires a constant Internet connection, has been put through its paces and the results are not pretty.

PC Gamer test drove the technology, after receiving copies of both Settlers VII and Assassin’s Creed 2 for the PC, which both contain the DRM tech. The site reports that launching a game while offline results in an error message right away.

The next test involved removing a PC’s network cable in the middle of a play session:

This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers'. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen - all my progress since it last autosaved was lost.

Ouch.

The reverse is also true; if Ubisoft’s master servers were to go down, PC Gamer says that “everyone playing a current Ubisoft game is kicked out of it and loses their progress.”

ReclaimYourGame, which reviews and reports on various DRM systems used in games, offers a pro and con article on Ubisoft’s technology. A sample from each side is below.

Pro:

Ubisoft can now be the sole content, DRM, copy protection provider. No more third party DRMs to worry about. If you have a problem, there's only one place to look and that's Ubisoft. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of being a ping-ping ball when it comes to authentication support.

Con:

How many of you have a family member with their own system that you game with?  I do, and lately it’s gotten ridiculously expensive. It used to be that my brother would buy a game and I would buy a different one, we’d both play through them, then trade them out. No longer, with more games switching to an account based system, it’s becoming an impossibility to do this.

Thanks DarkSaber!

In light of Ubisoft’s recent unveiling of its new digital rights management (DRM) technology, Savy Gamer asked a variety of game industry people for their take on the current state of DRM.

The responses were varied, and shockingly, seemed to be formulated based upon what role the person in question has within the game industry.

TIGA CEO Richard Wilson on DRM and game packaging:

I think that it should be made absolutely clear on the packaging if games require constant internet connection. In time, this will probably be the case.

The PC games market will probably come to depend on this type of technology. Most consumers will probably not find this to be a problem but clearly they should be properly informed before purchasing a game.

Wilson when asked if publishers should make some concessions to consumers regarding the fact that DRM makes games difficult or impossible to resell:

No. It is not the responsibility of publishers to sustain a secondary market in games. In fact, some game developers believe that their businesses have been damaged by the secondary market in games.

Direct2Drive UK Product Marketing Manager Nihal de Silva noted that his service is “DRM agnostic” and was “happy to work with publishers/developers whose products carry DRM as well as those with DRM free products.”

de Silva was asked if he thought customers would be happy with Ubisoft’s new DRM initiative. He replied, “no comment.”

Developer Cliff Harris of Positech Games, which releases DRM-free games, was asked if he thought a lack of DRM contributed to piracy of Positech games:

I don’t think it has made much difference at all. Maybe a few of the more honest people now buy the game rather than pirate it, but this sort of thing is impossible to measure.

It seems any game, even if its $0.99 has a five hour demo and is DRM-free and done by a nobel-peace prize winning game design legend, will be cracked and distributed on day one by some self righteous teenager anyway.

StarForce’s Deputy Marketing Director Dmitry Guseff was asked how long it typically takes a cracker to bypass StarForce’s DRM technology:

If we take huge titles like “STALKER Clear Sky”, it took them 3 weeks to bypass which is very good result for AAA class game. For example “Mount and Blade” is still holding since the beginning of December.

So, basically AAA titles hold around a month, less important titles much longer. I have to add that if we hadn’t implemented some consumer friendly features those titles would have been held much longer.

With the beta for Settlers 7, Ubisoft is unveiling a new anti-piracy measure that will require gamers to log into their Ubi.com account in order to authenticate their play session.

While requiring an Internet connection is not the most gamer-friendly initiative ever devised, the invasive technology does have at least two decent aspects, as noted on GameSpy: game saves will be stored online and can be accessed from anywhere (providing an Internet connection is available) and a single game can be installed on “hundreds” of PCs.

GameSpy seems to think that this system is at least a little better than the StarForce DRM system Ubisoft used in the past. As one columnist stated:

I think the DRM benefits of this approach and the ancillary bonuses (remote game saves, unlimited installations, no CD authentication) will end up outweighing the annoyance of having to log-in before playing.

Ars Technica compared the solution to an annoying practice employed by some retailers:

If you're annoyed when you have to show your receipt to someone when you walk out of an electronics store, Ubisoft is not the company for you. This is like having to show your receipt every time you want to turn on your television.

2K Games announced this week that BioShock 2 will be available for pre-order on Steam, and that the game would be protected by SecuROM DRM software, much to the dismay of gamers who had negative SecuROM experiences with the first BioShock (which launched with an activation limit). 

In response to the uproar, 2K Community Manager Elizabeth Tobey responded on the 2K Forums with the following clarification:

BioShock 2 is using a standard Games for Windows Live activation system, much like other games you have played in the past. That doesn't mean you always have to be online to play or save the game - you can create an offline profile for the Single Player portion of the game (you just won't earn achievements and you can't play Multiplayer, of course.)

We are using SecuROM only as a disc check method for the retail copy of BioShock 2. That is it's only use.

Tobey later confirmed that SecuROM will only be used as a disc check but that activation will be done through Games for Windows Live—a revelation that may have PC gamers groaning given GFWL's less than stellar reputation.  Furthermore, GFWL will place restrictions on your ability to save without creating a profile, and will require online activation even for single-player mode.

While the BioShock 2 DRM scheme appears to be less restrictive than the DRM included with the launch version of the original BioShock, players will still have to contend with Games for Windows Live which has had a checkered history in games like Dawn of War 2, Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV.

In September 2008, EA was slapped with a class-action lawsuit over their use of SecuROM in Spore, but such a lawsuit is unlikely for 2K Games given the limited role they claim that SecuROM will have.


Dan Rosenthal is a legal analyst for the games industry.

Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) President Hal Halpin recently discussed gamers’ rights with the website Skewed & Reviewed.

Among the topics broached were Digital Rights Management (DRM), M-rated game sales, triumphs of the past year and the challenges still remaining.

Halpin on the greatest single current threat to gamers’ rights:

Again, generally, digital rights as it relates to consumers. More particularly, I’d say that a challenge within that challenge may be that we still have a lot of work to do regarding combating negative stereotypes of gamers and gaming.

On further reducing the sale of adult-rated games to minors:

Beyond that, I believed and continue to believe, that parental responsibility must begin there. To ask more of the merchant is unfair and unprecedented, compared with how DVDs, music and motion pictures are sold. They¹ve done and are doing enough.

Disclosure: GamePolitics is a publication of the ECA

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has debuted a new online presence aimed at educating consumers about such issues as digital content distribution, license agreements, virtual property and piracy.

The Gamers for Digital Rights web presence includes a glossary of terms and concepts, a Facebook Group and the ability to sign—and comment on—a DRM and End User Licensing Agreements (EULAs) petition to the FTC.

Jennifer Mercurio, ECA Vice President and General Counsel, added:

The importance of this issue is mounting, as we move from a packaged goods model, where we own what we buy, to a digitally-distributed model, where we may have a license for what we buy.

As part of its drive into the issue, the ECA also announced the hiring of Robert L. (“Beau”) Hunter, IV as Digital Rights Consultant. Hunter joins the ECA after serving as Manager for IP Enforcement with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

As the Canadian government undertakes a public consultation on copyright issues, the head of game publishers lobbying group ESA Canada has penned an op-ed on the issue for Straight.com.

Not surprisingly, Danielle Parr argues for technological protection measures (TPM) and against mod chips (which are not currently illegal in Canada). Parr writes:

For the video-game industry, TPMs are not only used to prevent piracy and cheating (e.g. “modding” game code to give an unfair advantage over other players); they also enable access to a greater range of features and options that would otherwise be unavailable. Things like parental controls... “trial” or “demo” versions of games, and new digital distribution platforms like Valve’s Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, or the PlayStation Network, all provide greater choice and access for consumers...

By ensuring that consumers have a variety of digital offerings to choose from, legal protection for TPMs allows market forces to protect consumer interests, so if a consumer does not like the conditions of sale or terms of service for one digital product or service, they can simply take their business elsewhere. Failing to protect TPMs under the law effectively means that the government is dictating the business model, which is bad news for business and for consumers.

Those commenting on the Straight.com piece, however, don't seem to be buying Ms. Parr's arguments. As I post this, there are 15 comments, all of which are critical of the ESA Canada boss's op-ed.

GFOX: Danielle Parr, and the [ESA Canada] are completely out of touch on this issue. By failing to bend to an American lobby group such as the ESA I hardly think that the government of Canada can be seen as "dictating" any particular business model... The ESA's [penchant] for freely spewing unsubstantiated and exaggerated statistical data with the sole intention of striking fear into the hearts and minds of lawmakers is appalling...

NerdOfAllTrades: I agree that measures should be taken to prevent piracy, but punishing your loyal customers with TPM, which will only mildly inconvenience real pirates for the few hours it takes them to remove it... will only make people want to buy fewer PC games.
 
Sébastien Duquette: DRM is a failure... I really don't like Parr's fear-mongering tone. The industry of video game is flourishing, without DRM inforcement

Will: The video game industry has claimed to be on the brink of collapse due to piracy since the 1980s, and yet it somehow continues to grow bigger and more profitable... There will always be free riders who don't pay for their copy, but that isn't relevant. It's how many games you sell, not how many you don't sell that matters... This control-freak mentality... serves only to create hostility between the industry the customers...

AWJ: once you throw in an anti-circumvention law like the American DMCA, your platform monopoly becomes a state-enforced monopoly... Danielle is even arguing is that if the government doesn't give Microsoft and Nintendo and Sony the state-enforced monopolies they want, then it's "dictating the business model". If nothing else, I admire her chutzpah...

WayneB: Let me get this straight - [DRM] is an advantage to the consumer? What a bald faced lie.

Idle: This is a disgusting show of contempt for canadians brought to you by the ESA "of Canada".

GP: In the photo at left, Parr is seen at ESA Canada's Ottawa Day 2009 lobbying event.

Given the recent history of consumer-unfriendly DRM fiascos surrounding Spore and other high-profile PC titles, it's refreshing to hear from a vendor of copy protection software who is actively seeking gamer input.

While we will confess to knowing very little about a DRM product called Byteshield, we note that CEO Jan Samzelius posted in the GamePolitics/ECA forums last night:

We pride ourselves on listening to gamers and try to configure our solution accordingly... We are trying to convince game publishers and developers to put gamers first and organize everything else around it. I want to hear from everybody about what you do not like and then see if you like what our solution does.

Byteshield appears to have received positive reviews from the anti-DRM crowd at The Prism.

GP: This is certainly not an endorsement of Byteshield as I haven't tested it myself. But as a game consumer, I'm always pleased when company execs keep gamers in mind.

The video game industry continues to find new and creative ways to stick it to PC gamers.

In the latest example, EA has announced that the much-anticipated Command & Conquer 4 will require players to constantly be connected to the Internet, even for single-player campaigns.

That requirement, however, violates one of the basic tenets of the Gamer's Bill of Rights, a document released at PAX 08 by Stardock CEO Brad Wardell and Gas Powered Games CEO Chris Taylor. EA, however, is not a signatory to the Bill of Rights. No surprise there.

Specifically, the C&C4 requirement violates this point:

Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.

Ars Technica reports comments on the connection requirement made by EA Community Leader "APOC":

As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4. This is primarily due to our 'player progression' feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time.

 

While some may be taken aback by this, we've been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets. We wanted to make sure it wouldn't take away any significant market or territory from playing the game. We have not found or seen any results that have made us think otherwise...

GP: This smells like backdoor DRM from here. Even if it's not, what if you're on a laptop? What if you're on an airplane? What if your Internet connection is down?

As a longtime PC gamer who has owned every version of the C&C and Red Alert games, this just sucks.

There is perhaps a glimmer of hope in APOC's comments. We note that he starts off with "As of right now..." Does that mean that this gamer-unfriendly policy is subject to change? 

It's time for PC gamers to make some noise about this nonsense.

Does game downloading on P2P networks have a negative impact on sales?

If so, you'd never prove it by looking at the case of The Sims 3. A late May report by Bloomberg indicated that The Sims 3 had been leaked and downloaded 180,000 times between May 18 to May 21. At that rate the not-yet-released PC game was on pace to eclipse Spore's record as most downloaded.

Despite the piracy, the DRM-less Sims 3 is experiencing the best-selling PC launch in EA's long history of publishing games. Says who? EA. The publisher issued a press release yesterday trumpeting 1.4 million legit units sold during the game's first week of availability.

At $50 a pop, that's $70 million in sales. In a week. And yet industry types like EA's own Peter Moore still maintain that piracy is killing the PC games market and use that mantra to justify saddling consumers with unwanted DRM or worse, not releasing PC versions of popular games.

If you've finished watching every E3 game trailer imaginable, check out Brain Chef. The browser-based game lets players fight with the likes of the RIAA, the Disney Corporation, and even the much-despised SecuROM DRM-ware.

Progress far enough and you can fight other players online...

Via: boingboing

While American kids love to play video games, the former head of the United States Air Force Cyber Command frets that a lack of interest in learning to write the code underlying those games is a threat to national security.

In a report for The Daily Beast author Douglas Rushkoff writes:

[General Elder] has no problem attracting recruits ready to operate robots or fly drones... Hell, they love playing videogames already. His problem is finding high-school graduates with any experience or interest in actually programming all this stuff. Unless something changes radically, Elder told me, the United States will be surpassed in cyberskills within a single generation. The best of our kids design videogames; the Indians, Chinese, and Russians' kids write the code on which those games run.

How could this be? It's because in America we don't value programming. We think of it like bricklaying, farming, or any other seemingly menial skill. We ship our networking jobs to India, China, and other formerly Third World nations...

Rushkoff indirectly points the finger of blame at America's IP enforcement, which discourages tinkering - and thus learning about - digital technology:

In a computing marketplace where altering one's iPhone will "brick" its functionality and where user improvement to programs is treated as an intellectual-property violation, it's no wonder we have adopted the attitude that our technology is finished and inviolable from the minute it has been purchased. Just clicking on "agree" during installation says as much.

Via: GameCulture

We've got DRM in our games, the RIAA continues to sue small-fry, individual file sharers, the consumer-unfriendly Digital Millenium Copyright Act is the law of the land, the IP industry is trying to push DMCA-like legislation in Canada, and the secret ACTA copyright negotiations are ongoing.

But the copyright lobby would like to be in your kid's school, too.

The Copyright Alliance, a lobbying group which includes game publishers trade association the Entertainment Software Association among its members, has just launched the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation, which it bills as a non-profit, charitable organization:

Its mission as of now is K-12 schools, and... we are already working with many schools across the country... The focus of our curricula is student empowerment; communicating how the U.S. Constitution gives each and every one of us rights and ownership over our creations.

Taking classroom time away from the 3R's is not a new idea for those in the IP protection business, however. As GamePolitics reported in 2007, the ESA's top enforcement exec, Ric Hirsch, told attendees at an anti-piracy conference:

In the 15- to 24-year-old (range), reaching that demographic with morality-based messages is an impossible proposition... which is why we have really focused our efforts on elementary school children. At those ages, children are open to receiving messages, guidelines, rules of the road, if you will, with respect to intellectual property.

The annual report of game publishing giant Electronic Arts landed in GP's inbox this morning. Typically, reading through these things is a surefire remedy for insomnia, but EA's contains a few tidbits worth mentioning.

1.) EA's failed bid to gobble up Take-Two cost the company $21 million:

As a result of the terminated discussions [with T2], we recognized $21 million in related costs consisting of legal, banking and other consulting fees...

2.) EA uses DRM (you knew that) and is watching for piracy online:

We typically distribute our PC products using copy protection technology, digital rights management technology or other technological protection measures to prevent piracy... We are actively engaged in enforcement and other activities to protect against unauthorized copying and piracy, including monitoring online channels for distribution of pirated copies, and participating in various industry-wide enforcement initiatives, education programs and legislative activity around the world.

3.) Only 3% of EA employees are unionized, and they all work for DICE:

As of March 31, 2009, we had approximately 9,100 regular, full-time employees, of whom over 5,100 were outside the United States... Approximately 3 percent of our employees, all of whom work for DICE, our Swedish development studio, are represented by a union, guild or other collective bargaining organization.

4.) GameStop and Wal-Mart are EA's biggest customers; each accounts for 14% of EA sales:

Worldwide, we had direct sales to two customers, GameStop Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which each represented approximately 14 percent of total net revenue for the fiscal year... the concentration of our sales in one, or a few, large customers could lead to a short-term disruption in our sales if one or more of these customers significantly reduced their purchases or ceased to carry our products...

5.) EA worries about game content legislation and its potential effect on sales:

Legislation is continually being introduced in the United States... for the establishment of government mandated rating requirements or restrictions on distribution of entertainment software based on content... Other countries have adopted or are considering laws regulating or mandating ratings requirements...  Adoption of government ratings system or restrictions... could harm our business by limiting the products we are able to offer to our customers...

6.) EA worries about falling victim to a Hot Coffee incident but has taken steps to prevent it from happening:

If one or more of our titles were found to contain hidden, objectionable content, our business could suffer... Retailers have on occasion reacted to the discovery of such hidden content by removing these games from their shelves, refusing to sell them, and demanding that their publishers accept them as product returns.

We have implemented preventative measures designed to reduce the possibility of hidden, objectionable content from appearing in the video games we publish. Nonetheless, these preventative measures are subject to human error, circumvention, overriding, and reasonable resource constraints.

GamePolitics readers are familiar with the Digital Rights Management controversy which marred the release of Will Wright's long-awaited Spore last year.

But DRM and the consumer-unfriendly Digital Millenium Copyright Act are apparently concerns for drivers as well as gamers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that a proposal before Congress would allow independent auto repair shops to break the DRM which currently locks them out of your car's diagnostic computer:

The Right-To-Repair Act of 2009 (H.R. 2057)... points to a much bigger consumer issue... One underlying legal problem here is the DMCA, which prohibits bypassing or circumventing "technological protection measures..."

And the issue goes beyond the importance of being able to get independent repair and maintenance services. The use of technological "locks" against tinkerers also threatens "user innovation" -- the kinds of innovation that traditionally have come from independent tinkerers -- which has increasingly been recognized as an important part of economic growth and technological improvement...

In short, thanks to the DMCA, we need a Right-To-Repair Act not just for cars, but increasingly for all the things we own.

Via: boing boing

In a refreshing break from the standard video game industry propaganda, a pair of maverick PC developers offer some straight talk on DRM to Gamasutra's Paul Hyman.

Ron Carmel of 2D Boy (World of Goo) believes that the major publishers are beginning to back off on the use of DRM following consumer outrage over its use in games like Spore:

I definitely believe this is all the result of a change in the public perception of DRM, a sort of grass roots uprising. Gamers are much more vocal about it than they used to be, perhaps because they are so accustomed to downloading music without too many restrictions.

But Carmel also relates DRM to the battle over used game sales currently being waged between video game publishers and retailers:

Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy. What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.

Although, to be fair, there doesn't appear to be much of a secondary market for PC games among retailers. Consumer-to-consumer channels like Ebay may be a different story. Brad Wardell of Stardock added:

Spore was the final straw that broke the camel's back. Someone who buys software does not want to be made to feel like a chump for buying it.

Not surprisingly, the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies on behalf of publishers, argued in support of DRM. VP Ric Hirsch told Gamasutra:

DRM is a reasonable response to high piracy rates... There is little doubt that piracy would be far more widespread without game publishers' use of DRM.

On Thursday, April 30th Entertainment Consumers Association president Hal Halpin will speak at the Triangle Game Conference in Raleigh, NC.

Hal's presentation is billed as a conversation with Russ Pitts of The Escapist. The format sounds similar to Hal's well-received appearance with Spike TV's Geoff Keighley at PAX 08. The conference listing indictates that Hal will discuss:

The future of games as a media and a business, the role of the Electronic Consumers Association and the many key issues facing consumers today, including DRM, Net Neutrality, the economy and the ESRB.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

Seems like a bad trade from here.

Activision Blizzard has bailed from the PC Gaming Alliance, the trade group devoted to promoting the PC side of the video game biz.

Joining the organization, however, is Sony DADC. You might know them better by their widely-reviled SecuROM software, the DRM that famously sullied last year's Spore launch.

GP: As a longtime PC gamer who has been frustrated by the game industry's shabby treatment of computer players in recent years, I've been enthused by the concept of the PCGA. But the decidely consumer-unfriendly SecuROM is a major part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Via: Blue's News

UPDATE: Game Biz Blog spoke with PCGA Program Manager John Ehrig, who offered the organization's view on SecuROM's Sony DADC's participation:

PCGA doesn’t have any ability at all to limit its membership. Anyone that’s in the PC gaming arena who’s willing to pay their dues and sign a member agreement can become members. We’re not in a position to prevent people from joining our group.

 

We get [complaints] a lot, people saying ‘oh why are they a member, they shouldn’t be a member, they don’t really believe in PC gaming’. It’s not unusual at all... The impression that somebody in the general public might have in [a member’s] commitment to PC gaming can be completely biased by some rumour or false impressions they’ve picked up.

Brett Schenker, Online Advocacy Manager for the Entertainment Consumers Association, circulated the following to ECA members on Friday.

You don't need to be an ECA member to sign the petition that Brett mentions, so feel free to check it out:

Over the past year we have witnessed a growing concern among gamers about the issues of increasingly invasive Digital Rights Management (DRM) and End User Licensing Agreements (EULAs). 

The FTC is holding hearings on the issue of DRM and EULAs. Read the ECA's statement, sign the petition and comment about how consumer rights are being diminished.

The ECA respects the careful balance that must exist between the content community and the customer, and we agree that piracy is an ever-present challenge for the trade; at the same time, consumers must be protected from crippling DRM and murky EULAs.

Now's the time to weigh in with your thoughts about DRM and EULAs.

We acknowledge that these are weighty and topically-important issues, without easy solutions, and we are pleased to see the FTC providing a forum for thoughtful discussion of the matter.  We wanted to give you, the consumer, an opportunity to express your opinions on DRM and EULAs, which will be delivered to the FTC.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

Last year's angry consumer backlash over Spore's intrusive DRM apparently convinced the suits at Electronic Arts that they had made a mess of things.

Edge Online reports that the publisher is now offering a software tool which can be used by PC gamers to remove authorization limits. This will allow computer games to be re-installed or moved to other PCs without limitation.

In addition to the bad press, the Spore DRM situation spawned at least one class action lawsuit against EA.

Download EA's De-authorization Management Tool (DMT) here.

Last week was a busy one for Entertainment Consumers Association President Hal Halpin.

On Wednesday Hal was in Seattle to serve as a panelist on the Federal Trade Commission's much-anticipated town hall meeting on digital rights management (DRM). From Seattle it was down to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. At GDC Hal was interviewed by - among others - Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica and spoke at length about the needs of the game consumer in relation to the game industry's desire for DRM and those pesky End User License Agreements (EULA):

We suggested a few things to the FTC, one of which was we'd like to see DRM disclosed. So when people go to the store and buy the packaged good, the PC game, they'll see something on the front of the box saying there is DRM inside, and to what degree it will be invasive.

The second thing that we recommended was that EULAs get standardized, so again, rather than have 30 or 40 types of agreements, there would be one standard one for all different types of computer games. People go into the store, buy the game, open it, and they can no longer return it... by standardizing the EULA, consumers will have the confidence to know what it is they're agreeing to before they buy the product.

That didn't go over so well. There was a room of attorneys that kind of gasped when we suggested standardization. One panelist commented that the EULA really were there as consumer information, and that was the one and only time that the FTC jumped in and said 'wait a second, this has nothing to do with consumer information, this is purely IP protection...'

Hal also spoke about the coming shift to digital distribution and how this will affect the game consumer:

The transition from disc-based media to digital media... it's essentially going to remove the "purchase to own" out of the equation, replacing it with purchasing a license. That's how PC games are now... That paradigm shift, it's very important for us to get out ahead of it, so with DRM and EULAs, so we can say these are what consumer's rights are, and have an easy way to identify that in the purchasing process...

One of the reasons it's important to get EULAs standardized and DRM disclosed is that when you talk about different [delivery] systems like Steam... there are still controls in place. While it's not SecuROM, it's another form of DRM, it's just in a different way. Consumers need to understand that...

 

Some [game] publishers... feel that the vocal minority of consumers who spoke up about Mass Effect and Spore represent the 'pirates' and in doing so fanned the flames for a much larger percentage of consumers who now feel like they're not being listened to. A dismissive attitude from the industry probably came back to haunt them in sales...

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.
 

Having apparently taken a lesson from the Spore DRM fiasco, publisher Electronic Arts announced this week that The Sims 3 will be DRM-free when the game launches in June.

The Los Angeles Times reports that The Sims 3 will feature only serial number-based copy protection. EA exec Rod Humble said:

We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.

The Federal Trade Commission's much-anticipated Town Hall Meeting on digital rights management (DRM) will take place today at the University of Washington Law School in Seattle.

The all-day event begins at 8:30 A.M. Pacific and will be webcast live.

Among other participants, Entertainment Consumers Association President Hal Halpin will serve on the 1:15 P.M. panel "Informing Consumers." According to the FTC's agenda, "This panel will discuss how companies communicate the existence and effects of DRM protections on products and services to consumers. It will explore ways of providing consumers with better notice."

In advance of his panel appearance, Halpin issued a statement on the Town Hall Meeting:

Over the past year we have witnessed a growing concern from gamers about the issues of increasingly invasive Digital Rights Management (DRM) and End User Licensing Agreements (EULAs). While we respect the careful balance that must exist between the content community and the customer, and agree that piracy is an ever-present challenge for the trade, it is also becoming evident that consumer rights are being diminished in the process...

The law, in the area of EULAs in particular, is not as clear as it once was. And the software industry’s potential side-stepping of the First Sale Doctrine’s protections – by terming their products as “licensed” rather than “sold” - leaves us concerned about the future of interactive entertainment, generally...

Halpin also noted that the ECA is preparing new position statements on both DRM and EULAs. You can read the full text of his statement here.

Among others known to be appearing at the Town Hall on behalf of consumers is Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

Writing for UK newspaper The Guardian, author Cory Doctorow offers an eminently sensible fix for those confusing, consumer-unfriendly End User License Agreements:

Here's the world's shortest, fairest, and simplest licence agreement: "Don't violate copyright law." If I had my way, every digital download from the music in the iTunes and Amazon MP3 store, to the ebooks for the Kindle and Sony Reader, to the games for your Xbox, would bear this – and only this – as its licence agreement.

"Don't violate copyright law" has a lot going for it, but the best thing about it is what it signals to the purchaser, namely: "You are not about to get screwed."

Cory also finds irony in the approach which content rights-holder take on the copyright issue:

The copyright wars have produced some odd and funny outcomes, but I think the oddest was when the record industry began to campaign for more copyright education on the grounds that young people were growing up without the moral sensibility that they need to become functional members of society.

The same companies that spent decades telling lawmakers that they were explicitly not the guardians of the morality of the young – that they couldn't be held accountable for sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, for gangsta rap, for drug-fuelled dance-parties – did a complete reversal and began to beat their chests about the corrupting influence of downloading on the poor kiddies.

Ditto for the video game industry. As GamePolitics has reported in the past, game publishing lobby group ESA hopes to takes its anti-piracy "education" program into elementary schools.