Miscellaneous > Intellectual Property & Law

Electronic Arts hit with lawsuit

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Lead Head:
Over copy protection software Securom.

--- Quote ---Electronic Arts may have attempted to appease angry customers by amending its digital rights management policy on Spore, but the company's DRM troubles aren't over yet.

Earlier this week, a class action suit was filed in the Northern District of California Court on behalf of Melissa Thomas and all other Spore purchasers. The suit contends that EA violated the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and Unfair Competition Law by failing to inform consumers that by installing Spore, they also inadvertently install a program called SecuROM. SecuROM is a copy protection program that limits the number of times software can be installed on a PC. In the case of Spore, that limit was set to three (and later upped to five).

"Although consumers are told the game uses access control and copy protection technology, consumers are not told that this technology is actually an entirely separate, stand-alone program which will download, install, and operate on their computer," reads the complaint (PDF). "Once installed, it becomes a permanent part of the consumer's software portfolio. Even if the consumer uninstalls Spore, and entirely deletes it from their computer, SecuROM remains a fixture on their computer unless and until the consumer completely wipes their hard drive through reformatting or replacement of the drive."
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Full Article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10050717-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

I've had to mess with this Securom crap before, its some nasty stuff. You need a special utility to get rid of it, ontop of digging around in the depths of the registry and the various folders within windows, and if you don't delete or remove the files in the right order, Securom will automatically create new ones, much like a virus.

worker201:
They're screwed.  California's consumer protection laws are stiff, and sneaky shit like that just won't fly.  Their attorney general is way more of a badass than Governor Schwarzenegger.

Aloone_Jonez:
This sounds like another rootkit.

They should ban all software that refuses to uninstall completely when you ask it to.

Lead Head:
I agree, there is just a point where all this copy protection crap gets to excessive.

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