Farewell SecuROM, We Hardly Know Ye

[Sikon]

<img src="/images/news/securom_small.png" alt="SecuROM" />The battle of sane humanity against <a href="http://defectivebydesign.org">Digital Restrictions Management</a> seems to have come to a full, small though it may be, victory on the Heroes V front. With StarForce gone for good before the game was even released, SecuROM, too, seems to have followed it.



Even though the game still requires the CD (or DVD, depending on your version) in the drive, it appears that it does not do any copy protection checks whatsover. With the Russian version, tested on Windows XP x64 and Ubuntu 6.06 with Cedega 4.x, even copying the files from the DVD to the hard disk and then burning them to a blank DVD sufficed, let alone cloning the DVD with K3b - directly or via an intermediate ISO image.

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1154113139

[Kalah]

What about other versions?

[Sikon]

I'll try looking if the English version is still available for download somewhere on our LAN, but seeing how the 1.0 EXE file from the English version worked with the Russian one, I think there should be no problem.
Edited on Fri, Jul 28 2006, 13:11 by Sikon

[Xenofex.XVII]

Should it mean, that i don't need windows anymore ?

[baby arm]

I thought the Russian version never had it to begin with.

[Paulus1]

I have the UK-English version (Denmark), and patched it to 1.2.

Securom seems to be still very much in there in my version.
Edited on Fri, Jul 28 2006, 18:58 by Psychobabble

[Psychobabble]

Yeah, as far as I know, the Russian version never shipped with securerom.

[asandir]

hmmm .... might have to check this as well ....

[Psychobabble]

Ummm, just noticed there was a whole lot of discussion about making illegal copies and circumventing copy protection here... i just edited/deleted all of it. Consider this a warning, future infringements of site policy may result in harsher action.
Edited on Fri, Jul 28 2006, 18:59 by Psychobabble

[ThunderTitan]

"illegal copies and circumventing copy protection here... i just edited/deleted all of it"

If you own the game making copies or circumventing protection isn't illegal. Unless you're in a dictatorial state.

[Psychobabble]

If you own the game making copies or circumventing protection isn't illegal. Unless you're in a dictatorial state.

Not true. The second of those is illegal in the US and the EU, among others, and soon to be in Australia. This was in response to an internation treaty whose acronym escapes me atm. I can give you more details later if you like.

[Psychobabble]

Ah, my suspicion was right, it's the 1996 WIPO treaty, article 11:

Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law.

59 countries are signatories to this.

Oh, and even making backup copies isn't legal in all countries, in Australia for example it's illegal.

[Sikon]

Ummm, just noticed there was a whole lot of discussion about making illegal copies and circumventing copy protection here...

Hey, wait. Under the US Copyright Act, it is perfectly legal to make copies for personal archival purposes, and that's what I did. And since there was no copy protection to begin with, I didn't circumvent anything.

That was the plan all along: through DRM, create a twisted perception of what constitutes copyright infringement, and abolish fair use. So far, they have been successful. It's a shame to see that CH helps them in achieving their goal, although this news entry was deleted rightfully because it wasn't news and had a factual error. Sorry for my ignorance.

[ThunderTitan]

Ah, my suspicion was right, it's the 1996 WIPO treaty, article 11:

Wrong link. Here: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/ ... #P87_12240

And that treaty doesn't mention any Fair Use clauses.

And Article 6:

(1) Authors of literary and artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing the making available to the public of the original and copies of their works through sale or other transfer of ownership.

(2) Nothing in this Treaty shall affect the freedom of Contracting Parties to determine the conditions, if any, under which the exhaustion of the right in paragraph (1) applies after the first sale or other transfer of ownership of the original or a copy of the work with the authorization of the author.

[Sikon]

In my case, I didn't circumvent any "technical protection" measures (as if "they" are helpless and need protection... never mind).

Let's see: I copied a DVD that was not protected in the first place, for backup purposes. If this is circumvention, then I hereby copyright this text and forbid anyone to copy it. Protected by "null transform"/ROT26 DRM encryption. Circumventors will be prosecuted." Will it make sense to a lawyer? I, for one, don't want to test it.

But okay, I didn't know it wasn't protected. Imagine, for a while, that the DVD was indeed protected. However, the fact that I copied the files, without preserving the disk structure, effectively removed such encryption. Trying to run a protected game with such a disk (and failing) is no more illegal than trying to run it with a completely unrelated disk, or no disk whatsoever.

And the fact that circumvention is illegal (and not even in all jurisdictions) does not invalidate the questionable ethics behind DRM. This is why users should actively oppose any attempts to restrict their freedom with technical measures, not just sit still and repeat "dura lex, sed lex". I was pleased to know that action was taken against StarForce, but displeased when Ubisoft said "I will still restrict you, but won't invade your system with drivers", the community silently gave consent. This is indeed a shame.

Attention: Legal rant follows

Some users here, as I noticed, believe that if something is "unreasonable" by the current views on copyright, backed by draconic copyright laws that potentially render almost everyone a criminal, it is automatically illegal.

The fact that some international treaty does not account for fair use does not eliminate, by itself, fair use as a concept, as defined by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and which the DMCA* did not abolish either. There is a fact, however, that DRM limits the possibility of some activities being considered as fair use in the future, since fair use is an evolving concept mostly decided in courts. What DRM does is preventing access to copyrighted material altogether, fair use or not - including activities that currently constitute infringement, but may in the future be redefined as fair use.

But, fair use notwithstanding, here is a quote from the US Copyright Act, taken from a article by a Free Software Foundation lawyer on the SCO v. Linux controversy:

(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or

(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

This is section 117, entitled "Limitation on exclusive rights: computer programs".

_____
[size=small]* Don't get me wrong, the DMCA is mostly a fine complement to the old Copyright Act accounting for the development of technology, if not for the DRM clauses. I only find it somewhat funny that I, a Russian, spend time comparing US laws, which don't even apply in Russia per se - even though we now (since 2004) have our own DRM law to cope with.[/size]

[ThunderTitan]

Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law.

Doesn't that one kinda states that each member country can define what exactly is permited and what not?

Most likely that's why the treaty doesn't mention Fair Use, because each country has it's own rules regarding it.