Copy Protection: Is it For or Against the User?

StarForce, a company which develops and sells copy protection software, is involved in a fray with internet blogsite, boingboing.net for allegedly making false accusations against the StarForce product. Starforce has threatened to take legal action against boingboing.net and has contacted the FBI because of the blogsite™s harassment. The original article stated that: Starforce is an anti-copying program that some games covertly install when you install the game. The software causes system instability and crashes. The company that makes Starforce refuses to address the damage their software causes; instead, they blame the people on whom their malware has been forced. Boingboing.net also continued by advising gamers, The list of games infected with Starforce is long and depressing — there are dozens of these. If you’re a gamer, you owe it to yourself to have a look and check to see if Starforce might have damaged your PC. What’s more, you should join the boycott of any game that comes with this malicious software onboard. Boingboing.net found that the Starforce protection program opened up security holes in which viruses or trojans could enter through ~backdoors and take control of a user™s computer. Cory Doctorow, co-editor of boingboing.net, and the author of the complaints, responded to the threats of a lawsuit from Starforce by replying, “Thank you for your response. I have appended it to my original post and have forwarded it to the Chilling Effects project to be part of the permanent record of abusive attempts by companies to silence their critics.” Starforce has also threatened C/Net for their negative comments regarding their software. In an email sent to C/Net, Dennis Zhidkov, PR manager for Starforce started out by saying: Dear Sir, calling StarForce nefarious Rootkit/Virus is a good enough cause to press charges. How do you like that for a start? We don™t know if C/Net liked it or not, but one thing is certain; copy protection is getting a black eye from all the negative publicity that has been generated recently. Ask Sony. They™ll tell you it™s no party.