Spore, DRM, and You
So just awhile ago I started reading about that over hyped game, Spore, just find out that they have some sort of DRM (Digital Rights Management) that’s making everyone pissed off.
In order for you to understand this entry, you first need to know what DRM is and what it does, and for that reason I’ll explain what is it and what it does first.
DRM (Digital Rights Management) was designed to preserves the rights of a software, hardware, or file of the original creator. What this means is that if you download a music file, for an example, the creator (in this case, the record company who signed up the music artist) of the file still holds the rights. But this is just common sense, right? Well, DRM steps it up by placing limitation on how you can use that music file. For a more better example, we take take a look at WMA (Windows Media Audio) files as if you download any purchased songs from WMP it’ll be in that form. Depending on where you download from, though, will have a different set of restrictions. One song I bought would only allow me to burn it to a music or mp3 CD a total of 3 times but allows me to copy it back and forth as many times as I want to a MP3 player, but that’s only after the 2 transfer (if I never had to format my computer then I can burn the file as many times that I want).
What makes DRM worst is because it’s govern by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which was passed and signed into law October 28th, 1998. The reason why I believe the DMCA is a downfall failure is because the writing for it is so vague that it makes it sound like just downloading a MP3 that an artist released on his web site for there fans to download for free could face fines and even jail time. It just adds to the problem and doesn’t help solve the problem.
What’s the problem? It’s something that everyone has done one time or another (unless you’re one of those kind of of person who doesn’t know what’s going on in the world of the Internet), pirated software or music. This pretty much leads up to the age of Napster, where you could download music from anywhere until one band (not going to name who because I’m too lazy to try to remember who it was or how to spell it) was crying about it (if I’m not mistaken, there record sales actually jumped because more people found out about there music through Napster, but would they say anything about it? Nope) and sued the creator(s) of Napster.
Years later and here we are. But that’s beside the point, we’re not here to talk about Napster, we’re here to talk about DRM and the game Spore.
So what does DRM has to do with Spore? Everything. They locked it down so much that you can only install the game and activated a total of 3 times before you have to call EA to try to get another activation in. To top it all off, if you have multiple people in your house hold who wants to play the game as well, you would need to buy another copy of the game since they don’t allow multiple user accounts in this game. But Sims 2 allowed you to do it? And that’s a fact (I have that game) but EA doesn’t like you, they just like your money.
So why is EA doing this? To prevent privacy, I guess, but here’s the kicker, someone actually pirated and released the game a few days before the official released! What this means is that those who illegally downloaded the game can reinstall it as many times as they want without having to worry about activating the software while those who legally bought the game is limited to how many times they can install and activated the game before it locks down and you have to make a phone call. Where the fairness?
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