Digital Rights Management | The Spicy Cauldron

Thinking twice about Spore

I was thinking about buying Spore when I’ve got the money, but now that customer opinions are starting to surface online after the game’s release at the end of last week, I’m having second thoughts owing to the way in which the game is crippled by loathsome DRM (digital rights management).

I’m going to have to find out more, but what I’ve found out so far tells me that one copy of the game can be installed on up to three computers—which seems, on the surface, great, as it means I can have a copy on the MacBook Pro and the iMac. However… you can only have one account per game, and can only install it three times. So, say I install it on both machines and then find myself having to reformat a hard drive, I can reinstall the game, bringing me up to my total allowance of three installs. But if I I have to wipe a hard drive and reinstall my OS and other applications just one more time, I can’t reinstall Spore. Not then, not ever again.

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Sunday, September 7th, 2008

tags: crippleware, Digital Rights Management, DRM, Macs, PCs, Spore

Eeny meeny miny mo, catch an iPod user, don’t let him go…

The G8 is, for those who don’t know, an international undemocratic gestalt made up of the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Together, they cook up new ways to manipulate and control people, trade, and money markets.

The G8 famously tell lies about how they’re going to tackle world poverty but then—after near enough promising on their mother’s graves—don’t do much at all other than make excuses. Now the G8 is cooking up draconian new copyright protection laws. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) between the US, EU, and Canada, will give border guards the right to seize our iPods and mobile phones whenever they suspect they contain illegal downloads.

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Wednesday, May 28th, 2008