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Phoenix
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The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/en...ll-end-piracy-open-markets-says-bushnellHow do you feel about having a uniquely keyed encryption chip built into your motherboard, deciding whether or not you can play that game you just bought? I can see this being implemented as well as Windows Genuine Advantage. There's a large number of users with legally purchased copies of Windows that WGA says are pirate, something Microsoft doesn't like to talk about. It's also fun when your legitimate key works one day and Microsoft decides to brand your OS as pirate on the next update, then denies your activation because someone out there on the internet has a key generator and you were the unlucky one this week. Hey, they already have your money so why should they care? Meanwhile the pirates stay two steps ahead, as always. Changing a motherboard with XP or Vista generates some rather fun OS behavior as well. Imagine this going to the next level and all your programs being subject to this little Hitler-on-a-chip on your system, not to mention the fact that the chip qualifies as a unique identifier by its very nature. Every packet sent on your system could be stamped with a GUID based on this chip, which means no matter where you are (think laptop here) you can be traced. If anyone remembers Intel's idea to serialize its processors you'll understand where this is going. As if spam and Doubleclick cookies weren't bad enough...
What this amounts to is a perceived foolproof anti-piracy tool for the software vendors (the Titanic was unsinkable too, as I remember), a built-in tracking tool, and more "you have to prove you paid for it because we think you're a thief, but we want all your personal data that we've not paid a dime for" headaches for the end user. Honestly, I think this is my last computer upgrade. I might update my video cards at some point, but I doubt I'll build another full-scale system. I've got better things to do than try to hack my own system all the time just to use what I've already paid for, and I'm getting a little fed up with greedy corporations trying to stick their noses where they don't belong. |
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Tabun
Pixel Procrastinator
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Yeah, that pretty much sucks. And was to be expected. I'm currently following (or are nearly done with) a philosophy course that deals with epistemological questions relating to the introduction of advanced technologies. There's much talk of cybernetica, soft- and hardware operating closely to the brainfunctions, as it were, and such. First thing that popped into my mind with that: so now the big businesses are going to know everything you do, want and think, all the time, with much more ease.. And these "anti-terror.. " ehr "anti-piracy" technologies just prove that this is what will probably happen.
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?Morituri Nolumus Mori? |
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Thomas Mink
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More fuel for my Luddism fire. Or.. maybe I'm just pessimistic about all this, but.. hey.. I keep getting proven right as the years go on. Just in different ways than what's expected.
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Arnie
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Well not everyone plays games on their Comp, does this mean even these people will be spied on ?. I think this could backfire on the games developers and motherboard manufaturers.
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Will everybody stop getting shot.......
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Tabun
Pixel Procrastinator
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If it "works" to fight game-piracy, then it will obviously also work to fight OS-piracy. So everyone running a M$ product will be spied upon, if anyone is.
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« Last Edit: 2008-05-26, 12:59 by Tabun »
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?Morituri Nolumus Mori? |
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scalliano
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Looks like I'll get a bit more wear out of my PS3 than I previously thought. I really don't want the headache of having to re-buy every game I've got just because my new PC thinks I'm a criminal. I've been stung by the "CD Key In Use" error myself in the past, which is why nowadays I will crack games that I've bought by default, simply because I don't want to be denied what I've shelled out £35 for over some arsehole getting it for free. I know that's probably quite an admission on this forum, but I feel that it is not without coercion. I know warez is a touchy subject on any site, but it isn't warez when you can produce the receipt. And the game disks for that matter.
Besides, how can this be fullproof? Unless every game goes online-olny, it's just simply a case of unplugging your modem. How can it check then? It doesn't matter what they try, even the DRM-riddled Bioshock has been beaten. Seriously, like every other "final solution" for piracy, there are more holes in this than an Emmenthal factory.
Not to mention that many PC games I own are now deleted ...
Pho: I know all about XP making an arse of itself over a hardware change. Never mind the motherboard, I got hit with the whole WPA reactivation thing after I installed a new CD-RW drive. WTF?
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« Last Edit: 2008-05-26, 20:56 by scalliano »
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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Phoenix
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As far as I'm concerned, what someone does with their own system is their own business. It is not my job nor or any other Wirehead member's job to enforce the law. For clarity's sake, the rules on this forum regarding warez are as follows:
1) Don't post links to it.
2) Don't pimp it or attempt to distribute it.
3) Don't ever post CD-Keys or anything else that would allow someone to steal an account, yours or otherwise.
This is mainly to protect forum members from being exposed to virus-laden sites or objectionable material, and to protect them from getting in trouble at work, etc. Same rules for porn basically. Anything can be discussed as a subject, it's the linking and distributing of material that's the no-no. That policy has not changed. If you want to communicate something to someone that cannot go on the boards you can use the PM system for anything that cannot be posted publicly. If in doubt, you can always ask a team member or moderator if something is permissible for posting. Remember, the rules are there to make the forums a safer world for everyone. 
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scalliano
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Yup, that's me
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Well, those are three things I wouldn't do anyway, so that's all good. I suppose it is flagrant disregard for the EULA (I never bother reading it to be honest, I have better things to do), but it comes back to what you said in your first post; why should one feel the need to do this? To hack their own PC just to be assured that whatever they've paid good money for will actually work? I don't condone piracy, but the only people that these measures end up hurting are the poor sods actually keeping the industry alive ie us. There is always a workaround, it may take a while to surface, but the use of technology to combat piracy is as futile as wiring a plug while wearing boxing gloves. Case in point: Starforce. It was discovered relatively early on that in many cases Starforce could be circumvented simply by disconnecting the DVD drive, yet it was "fullproof". Yeah, fullproof in the sense that if it got installed you could never use your PC again. Bet On Soldier killed my last PC, so I'm very cautious about what PC games I buy these days. But, hey, according to them I'm a criminal mastermind, I deserved it, didn't I? |
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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Phoenix
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Indeed. The old "if you have nothing to hide" mantra. There's a reason the 4th Amendment to the US constitution exists. I wish the framers could have seen this day when corporations would become every bit as intrusive as they feared governments would.
Here's how I look at anti-piracy stuff. It's like expecting criminals to respect gun control laws. The average Joe who just wants to protect his family or keep an effective weapon around to be a "minute man" in case of, God forbid, some mass foreign invasion, has to jump through hoops to stay legal (google "section 922r" to see how ludicrous this can be) whereas the criminals don't give a hoot and buy their stuff on the black market. So Joe Citizen gets punished while the crooks don't care. It's the same with all this anti-piracy crap. The people who don't pirate are being punished for the actions of the ones that do. What happens when you push honest people too hard? I remember some upstart colonists throwing a little tea party a few hundred years ago because they had had enough. In the computer world things are rarely quite so dramatic. Instead, people resort to hacking and cracking their own legit software, as you mentioned, and that's where there's a can of worms. I don't mean the whole EULA thing, I mean that the user who is not technically savvy to the dangers of looking for, installing, and using hacks and cracks can, through desperation of trying to get their own stuff to just work get their system infected with a trojan. That "perfect PC patcher thingie" program turned out to be a sneak attack and now Joe User becomes Botnet Member 922417. Now Joe User's system is working hard at stealing CD keys, personal and financial data, social security numbers, and flooding the net with spam... all because some company was ticked that someone in Uzbekistan made some illicit copies of some game that would never sell there anyway and wasn't good enough to warrant some massive hairball anti-piracy scheme in the first place, and so even more of their software is going to get stolen as a result of more infected PC's.
This whole system can and probably will blow up in their faces. Just like WGA doesn't work, just like every form of copy protection in existence has been cracked, just like DRM is the biggest failure and waste of time and money in the history of the digital age. The sad part is that companies that write good software will probably buy into the hype about all this and incorporate it into their products. Id's been jumping on the "piracy is killing video games" bandwagon lately and I'm rather disappointed in that. I don't mind CD keys, I'll tolerate Steam (for now) and I put up with SecureROM because my copy of F.E.A.R. was free and I don't mind putting a disk in a drive to play so long as it doesn't frag the disk or the drive. Putting a bloody chip on the motherboard that spies on me and can encrypt stuff with a key that *I* don't have rights over is not going to happen. I remember when the US Government tried to ban strong encryption, tried to outlaw PGP and other private use encryption programs, and then DES was cracked not two years later or so. Now all of a sudden encryption is a good thing? Just like guns, it's good so long as it's the government or some corporation using it to control the sheep, and not the other way around.
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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scalliano
Elite
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Yup, that's me
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I'm with you. Viruses are indeed a big risk in this area, even for someone who knows the craic (excuse the pun) but for your average schmo the potential for filling your PC with all manner of shite is untennable. And all because big business wants their thumb in your pie. I feel uncomfortable even when I go shopping, what with the endless CCTV all over the place. The last thing I want is to be spied upon in my own home. Personally, I boycott Steam for that very reason. OK, I have my PSN account set to auto sign-in, but that's my choice. I can still play GTA4 and RFoM without a net connection. When I load up a PS3 game (or any console game for that matter) I don't get a big error message saying, "you bought this second-hand, up yours", do I?
BTW I had a little look in the back of my D3 manual earlier - 5 entire pages af small print. Give me a break ..!
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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scalliano
Elite
Posts: 1095
Yup, that's me
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I don't mean to bump (or double-post), and I may be a bit behind the times here, but has anyone else seen this? http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/05/23/breaking-id-software-leaves-esaIf this trend continues, and the ESA does bite the dust, it may have implications for what we've been discussing above. Don't really know what to make of it myself, but then I'm no lawyer. |
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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Sucutrule
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As you said Phoenix, anything programed can be cracked and hacked.
As any security team should realize from the bottom of the asses, is that as long as a little insignificant thing that everyone is using correctly called the Internet and there's more people as intelligent as the security team (or even more intelligent) will realize "Hey! I don't have to pay for this crap! I can crack it by myself! And, why even keeping it to myself? Everyone should use it!"
There you go.
You are not selling stuff to monkeys (well, at least 50% of them are, anyways), anyone will crack it and distibute it over the internet. The problem here is not the people, the problem here is the internet (LE GASP!).
ARRRR, whatever ya' scurvin' cur! Imma cut ycha' if ya ever mess with mah pc matey!
OR...
The solution could be making more mediocre and unispired games until no one wants to play them! Well, that decition was taken long ago, and the winner (apparently) was the latter.
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How I am supposed to type will all this cheese laying around?
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fourier
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I have the solution: * fourier blows up the world Happy? I am. |
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scalliano
Elite
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Yup, that's me
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As you said Phoenix, anything programed can be cracked and hacked.
As any security team should realize from the bottom of the asses, is that as long as a little insignificant thing that everyone is using correctly called the Internet and there's more people as intelligent as the security team (or even more intelligent) will realize "Hey! I don't have to pay for this crap! I can crack it by myself! And, why even keeping it to myself? Everyone should use it!"
There you go.
You are not selling stuff to monkeys (well, at least 50% of them are, anyways), anyone will crack it and distibute it over the internet. The problem here is not the people, the problem here is the internet (LE GASP!).
ARRRR, whatever ya' scurvin' cur! Imma cut ycha' if ya ever mess with mah pc matey!
OR...
The solution could be making more mediocre and unispired games until no one wants to play them! Well, that decition was taken long ago, and the winner (apparently) was the latter.
*cough* Race Driver Grid *cough* The Internet has given people back their freedom, at least to an extent that does not sit well with government or big business. If they could, they would make it go away and force-feed us even more of their crap, be it propaganda, detergent or substandard recreational software. Look at what the Internet has done to the music industry - has it killed it? No. What the Internet has done is give the people who actually buy the shit the ability to be more discerning, and I'm not simply talking about the old Napster here either. Look at sites like EBay and Amazon, they both deal in second-hand goods, particularly the former. When you buy something on EBay, eg an old PC game some guy is looking shot of, it is a private transaction. The manufacturer receives no revenue from that, and that's where the TPM/Fritz chip comes in. Stuff piracy, they want rid of the preowned sections in EB and GameStop. They want you to buy it NEW, FULL PRICE and FROM THEM, not from some bloke clearing out his closet. *(Seriously, Codemasters, go back and do a proper touring car game instead if this NFS/PGR wannabe tripe.) |
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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