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82-619: The DVD Copy Control Association ( DVD CCA ) is an organization primarily responsible for the copy protection of DVDs . The Content Scramble System (CSS) was devised for this purpose to make copyright infringement difficult, but also presents obstacles to some legitimate uses of the media. The association is also responsible for the controversial Regional Playback Control (RPC), the region encoding scheme which gives movie studios geographic control over DVD distribution. As of 2001, members included film distributors such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. They filed

164-483: A Kickstarter project – "ebook stravaganza 3000" – to fund the conversion of 3,000 comics, written over 12 years, into a single "humongous" e-book to be released both for free and through the iBookstore; launched 8 February 2012, with the goal of raising $ 3,000 in 30 days. The "payment optional" DRM-free model in this case was adopted on Stevens' view that "there is a class of webcomics reader who would prefer to read in large chunks and, even better, would be willing to spend

246-445: A CSS-encrypted DVD to play on a computer running Linux , at a time when no compliant DVD player for Linux had yet been created. The legality of DeCSS is questionable: one of its authors was sued, and reproduction of the keys themselves is subject to restrictions as illegal numbers . More modern examples include ADEPT , FairPlay , Advanced Access Content System . The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty (WCT)

328-540: A DRM-free version. Websites – such as library.nu (shut down by court order on 15 February 2012), BookFi, BookFinder , Library Genesis , and Sci-Hub  – allowed e-book downloading by violating copyright. As of 2013, other developers, such as Blizzard Entertainment put most of the game logic is on the "side" or taken care of by the servers of the game maker. Blizzard uses this strategy for its game Diablo III and Electronic Arts used this same strategy with their reboot of SimCity ,

410-511: A Ubisoft server for the game. Later that month, a real crack was released that was able to remove the connection requirement altogether. In March 2010, Uplay servers suffered a period of inaccessibility due to a large-scale DDoS attack , causing around 5% of game owners to become locked out of playing their game. The company later credited owners of the affected games with a free download, and there has been no further downtime. In 2011, comedian Louis C.K. released his concert film Live at

492-472: A cash payout or album downloads free of DRM. Microsoft's media player Zune released in 2006 did not support content that used Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM scheme. Windows Media DRM , reads instructions from media files in a rights management language that states what the user may do with the media. Later versions of Windows Media DRM implemented music subscription services that make downloaded files unplayable after subscriptions are cancelled, along with

574-524: A certain user requires it. As an example, an activated Microsoft product, contains a Direct License which is locked to the PC where the product is installed. From business standpoint, on the other hand, some services now try to monetize on additional services other than the media content so users can have better experience than simply obtaining the copied product. From a technical standpoint, it seems impossible to completely prevent users from making copies of

656-497: A determined individual will definitely succeed in copying any media, given enough time and resources. Media publishers understand this; copy protection is not intended to stop professional operations involved in the unauthorized mass duplication of media, but rather to stop "casual copying". Copying of information goods which are downloaded (rather than being mass-duplicated as with physical media) can be inexpensively customized for each download, and thus restricted more effectively, in

738-492: A game is of low quality. The authors of FADE explicitly acknowledged this as a reason for including the explicit warning message. Anti-piracy measures are efforts to fight against copyright infringement , counterfeiting , and other violations of intellectual property laws. It includes, but is by no means limited to, the combined efforts of corporate associations (such as the RIAA and MPA ), law enforcement agencies (such as

820-639: A hobby, add their alias to the title screen, and then distribute the "cracked" product to the network of warez BBSes or Internet sites that specialized in distributing unauthorized copies of software. When computer software was still distributed in audio cassettes, audio copying was unreliable, while digital copying was time consuming. Software prices were comparable with audio cassette prices. To make digital copying more difficult, many programs used non-standard loading methods (loaders incompatible with standard BASIC loaders, or loaders that used different transfer speed). Unauthorized software copying began to be

902-466: A little money on it." In February 2012, Double Fine asked for crowdfunding for an upcoming video game, Double Fine Adventure , on Kickstarter and offered the game DRM-free for backers. This project exceeded its original goal of $ 400,000 in 45 days, raising in excess of $ 2 million. Crowdfunding acted as a pre-order or alternatively as a subscription . After the success of Double Fine Adventure , many games were crowd-funded and many offered

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984-449: A minimum, digital copy protection of non-interactive works is subject to the analog hole : regardless of any digital restrictions, if music can be heard by the human ear, it can also be recorded (at the very least, with a microphone and tape recorder); if a film can be viewed by the human eye, it can also be recorded (at the very least, with a video camera and recorder). In practice, almost-perfect copies can typically be made by tapping into

1066-595: A physical, analog or broadcast form into a digital form for portability or later use. Combined with the Internet and file-sharing tools, made unauthorized distribution of copyrighted content ( digital piracy ) much easier. DRM became a major concern with the growth of the Internet in the 1990s, as piracy crushed CD sales and online video became popular. It peaked in the early 2000s as various countries attempted to respond with legislation and regulations and dissipated in

1148-475: A presentation at DEF CON . The DMCA has been cited as chilling to legitimate users; such as security consultants including Niels Ferguson , who declined to publish vulnerabilities he discovered in Intel 's secure-computing scheme due to fear of arrest under DMCA; and blind or visually impaired users of screen readers or other assistive technologies . In 1999, Jon Lech Johansen released DeCSS , which allowed

1230-586: A problem when floppy disks became the common storage media. The ease of copying depended on the system; Jerry Pournelle wrote in BYTE in 1983 that " CP/M doesn't lend itself to copy protection" so its users "haven't been too worried" about it, while " Apple users, though, have always had the problem. So have those who used TRS-DOS , and I understand that MS-DOS has copy protection features". Pournelle disliked copy protection and, except for games, refused to review software that used it. He did not believe that it

1312-472: A process key was published by hackers, which enabled unrestricted access to AACS-protected content. In January 2007, EMI stopped publishing audio CDs with DRM, stating that "the costs of DRM do not measure up to the results." In March, Musicload.de, one of Europe's largest internet music retailers, announced their position strongly against DRM. In an open letter, Musicload stated that three out of every four calls to their customer support phone service are as

1394-618: A process known as " traitor tracing ". They can be encrypted in a fashion which is unique for each user's computer, and the decryption system can be made tamper-resistant . Copyright protection in content platforms also cause increased market concentration and a loss in aggregate welfare. According to research on the European Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market on platform competition, only users of large platforms will be allowed to upload content if

1476-477: A result of consumer frustration with DRM. Apple Inc. made music DRM-free after April 2007 and labeled all music as "DRM-Free" after 2008. Other works sold on iTunes such as apps, audiobooks, movies, and TV shows are protected by DRM. A notable DRM failure happened in November 2007, when videos purchased from Major League Baseball prior to 2006 became unplayable due to a change to the servers that validate

1558-549: A stream specification determining whether a stream can be recorded. This could block instances of fair use, such as time-shifting . It achieved more success elsewhere when it was adopted by the Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB), a consortium of about 250 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, and regulatory bodies from about 35 countries involved in attempting to develop new digital TV standards. In January 2001,

1640-554: A strict non-DRM policy. Baen Books and O'Reilly Media , dropped DRM prior to 2012, when Tor Books , a major publisher of science fiction and fantasy books, first sold DRM-free e-books . The Axmedis project completed in 2008. It was a European Commission Integrated Project of the FP6, has as its main goal automating content production, copy protection , and distribution, to reduce the related costs, and to support DRM at both B2B and B2C areas, harmonizing them. The INDICARE project

1722-534: A technology that exploits the automatic gain control feature of VCRs by adding pulses to the vertical blanking sync signal. These pulses may negatively affect picture quality, but succeed in confusing the recording-level circuitry of many consumer VCRs. This technology, which is aided by U.S. legislation mandating the presence of automatic gain-control circuitry in VCRs, is said to "plug the analog hole" and make VCR-to-VCR copies impossible, although an inexpensive circuit

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1804-621: Is a misnomer for some systems, because any number of copies can be made from an original and all of these copies will work, but only in one computer, or only with one dongle , or only with another device that cannot be easily copied. The term is also often related to, and confused with, the concept of digital restrictions management . Digital restrictions management is a more general term because it includes all sorts of management of works, including copy restrictions. Copy restriction may include measures that are not digital. A more appropriate term may be "technological protection measures" (TPMs), which

1886-499: Is controversial. There is an absence of evidence about the DRM capability in preventing copyright infringement , some complaints by legitimate customers for caused inconveniences, and a suspicion of stifling innovation and competition. Furthermore, works can become permanently inaccessible if the DRM scheme changes or if a required service is discontinued. DRM technologies have been criticized for restricting individuals from copying or using

1968-453: Is most commonly found on videotapes , DVDs , Blu-ray discs , HD-DVDs , computer software discs, video game discs and cartridges, audio CDs and some VCDs . It also may be incorporated into digitally distributed versions of media and software. Some methods of copy protection have also led to criticism because it caused inconvenience for paying consumers or secretly installed additional or unwanted software to detect copying activities on

2050-423: Is most commonly found on videotapes , DVDs, computer software discs, video game discs and cartridges, audio CDs and some VCDs . Many media formats are easy to copy using a machine, allowing consumers to distribute copies to their friends, a practice known as "casual copying". Companies publish works under copyright protection because they believe that the cost of implementing the copy protection will be less than

2132-474: Is often defined as the use of technological tools in order to restrict the use or access to a work. Unauthorized copying and distribution accounted for $ 2.4   billion per year in lost revenue in the United States alone in 1990, and is assumed to be causing impact on revenues in the music and the video game industry , leading to proposal of stricter copyright laws such as PIPA . Copy protection

2214-404: Is programmable on modern cards). With the rise of virtualization , however, the practice of locking has to add to these simple hardware parameters to still prevent copying. During the 1980s and 1990s, video games sold on audio cassette and floppy disks were sometimes protected with an external user-interactive method that demanded the user to have the original package or a part of it, usually

2296-532: Is protected by the FADE system. You can play with a pirated game- but not for long. The quality of a pirated game will degrade over time. Purchase only genuine software at legitimate stores. The usage of copy protection payloads which lower playability of a game without making it clear that this is a result of copy protection is now generally considered unwise, due to the potential for it to result in unaware players with unlicensed copies spreading word-of-mouth that

2378-517: Is the management of legal access to digital content . Various tools or technological protection measures ( TPM ), such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use, modification and distribution of copyrighted works (e.g. software , multimedia content) and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption . Laws in many countries criminalize

2460-417: Is used by many countries to prevent color photocopiers from producing counterfeit currency . The Counterfeit Deterrence System is used to prevent counterfeit bills from being produced by image editing software. Similar technology has been proposed to prevent 3D printing of firearms , for reasons of gun control rather than copyright. Digital rights management Digital rights management ( DRM )

2542-420: Is widely available that will defeat the protection by removing the pulses. Macrovision had patented methods of defeating copy prevention, giving it a more straightforward basis to shut down manufacture of any device that descrambles it than often exists in the DRM world. While used for pre-recorded tapes, the system was not adopted for television broadcasts; Michael J. Fuchs of HBO said in 1985 that Macrovision

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2624-594: The Atari ST "is almost unusable without its manual of over 600 pages!". (The magazine was mistaken; the ST version was so widely pirated that the company threatened to discontinue it. ) Copy protection sometimes causes software not to run on clones , such as the Apple II-compatible Laser 128 , or even the genuine Commodore 64 with certain peripherals. To limit reusing activation keys to install

2706-526: The FBI and Interpol ), and various international governments to combat copyright infringement relating to various types of creative works, such as software, music and films. These measures often come in the form of copy protection measures such as DRM , or measures implemented through a content protection network , such as Distil Networks or Incapsula. Richard Stallman and the GNU Project have criticized

2788-422: The public domain and that the company that published and sold on Amazon's service had no right to do so. Ubisoft formally announced a return to online authentication on 9 February 2010, through its Uplay online game platform, starting with Silent Hunter 5 , The Settlers 7 , and Assassin's Creed II . Silent Hunter 5 was first reported to have been compromised within 24 hours of release, but users of

2870-452: The public domain . The rise of digital media and analog-to-digital conversion technologies has increased the concerns of copyright-owners, particularly within the music and video industries. While analog media inevitably lose quality with each copy generation and during normal use, digital media files may be duplicated without limit with no degradation. Digital devices make it convenient for consumers to convert ( rip ) media originally in

2952-593: The 2010s as social media and streaming services largely replaced piracy and content providers elaborated next-generation business models. In 1983, the Software Service System (SSS) devised by the Japanese engineer Ryuichi Moriya was the first example of DRM technology. It was subsequently refined under the name superdistribution . The SSS was based on encryption, with specialized hardware that controlled decryption and enabled payments to be sent to

3034-489: The Beacon Theater as an inexpensive (US$ 5), DRM-free download. The only attempt to deter unlicensed copies was a letter emphasizing the lack of corporate involvement and direct relationship between artist and viewer. The film was a commercial success, turning a profit within 12 hours of its release. The artist suggested that piracy rates were lower than normal as a result, making the release an important case study for

3116-738: The DG Internal Market, on the Communication COM(2004)261 by the European Commission on "Management of Copyright and Related Rights" closed. In 2005, DRM Workshops of Directorate-General for Information Society and Media (European Commission) , and the work of the High Level Group on DRM were held. In 2005, Sony BMG installed DRM software on users' computers without clearly notifying the user or requiring confirmation. Among other things,

3198-572: The DVB Steering Board, and formalized by ETSI as a formal European Standard (TS 102 825-X) where X refers to the Part number. Nobody has yet stepped forward to provide a Compliance and Robustness regime for the standard, so it is not presently possible to fully implement a system, as no supplier of device certificates has emerged. In December 2006, the industrial-grade Advanced Access Content System (AACS) for HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs ,

3280-563: The DVD content is played, including what outputs are permitted and how such permitted outputs are made available. This keeps the encryption intact as the content is displayed. In May 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed as an amendment to US copyright law . It had controversial (possibly unintended) implications. Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested for alleged DMCA infringement after

3362-810: The Workshop on Digital Rights Management of the World Wide Web Consortium was held. On 22 May 2001, the European Union passed the Information Society Directive, with copyright protections. In 2003, the European Committee for Standardization /Information Society Standardization System (CEN/ISSS) DRM Report was published. In 2004, the Consultation process of the European Commission, and

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3444-480: The ability for a regional lockout. Tools like FairUse4WM strip Windows Media of DRM restrictions. The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property by the British Government from Andrew Gowers was published in 2006 with recommendations regarding copyright terms, exceptions, orphaned works, and copyright enforcement. DVB ( DVB-CPCM ) is an updated variant of the broadcast flag. The technical specification

3526-475: The activation limit led Spore to become the most pirated game in 2008, topping the top 10 list compiled by TorrentFreak . However, Tweakguides concluded that DRM does not appear to increase video game piracy, noting that other games on the list, such as Call of Duty 4 and Assassin's Creed , use DRM without limits or online activation. Additionally, other video games that use DRM, such as BioShock , Crysis Warhead , and Mass Effect , do not appear on

3608-480: The analog output of a player (e.g. the speaker output or headphone jacks) and, once redigitized into an unprotected form, duplicated indefinitely. Copying text-based content in this way is more tedious, but the same principle applies: if it can be printed or displayed, it can also be scanned and OCRed . With basic software and some patience, these techniques can be applied by a typical computer-literate user. Since these basic technical facts exist, it follows that

3690-402: The case MPAA v. Hotfile , Judge Kathleen M. Williams granted a motion to deny the prosecution the usage of words she views as "pejorative". This list included the word "piracy", the use of which, the motion by the defense stated, would serve no purpose but to misguide and inflame the jury. The plaintiff argued the common use of the terms when referring to copyright infringement should invalidate

3772-712: The circumvention of DRM, communication about such circumvention, and the creation and distribution of tools used for such circumvention. Such laws are part of the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the European Union 's Information Society Directive – with the French DADVSI an example of a member state of the European Union implementing that directive. Copyright holders argue that DRM technologies are necessary to protect intellectual property , just as physical locks prevent personal property from theft. For examples, they can help

3854-445: The claim that DRM was inciting people to use illegal copies. Although Ubisoft has not commented on the results of the "experiment", Tweakguides noted that two torrents on Mininova had over 23,000 people downloading the game within 24 hours of its release. In 2009, Amazon remotely deleted purchased copies of George Orwell 's Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) from customers' Amazon Kindles after refunding

3936-649: The complete blocking of any possibilities of making private copies was an impermissible behaviour under French copyright law. The broadcast flag concept was developed by Fox Broadcasting in 2001, and was supported by the MPAA and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). A ruling in May 2005 by a United States courts of appeals held that the FCC lacked authority to impose it on the US TV industry. It required that all HDTVs obey

4018-440: The consumer's computer. Making copy protection effective while protecting consumer rights remains a problem with media publication. Media corporations have always used the term copy protection , but critics argue that the term tends to sway the public into identifying with the publishers, who favor restriction technologies, rather than with the users. Copy prevention and copy control may be more neutral terms. "Copy protection"

4100-417: The content is sufficiently valuable and network effects are strong. For information on individual protection schemes and technologies, see List of copy protection schemes or relevant category page. Copy protection for computer software, especially for games, has been a long cat-and-mouse struggle between publishers and crackers . These were (and are) programmers who defeated copy protection on software as

4182-412: The content legally, such as by fair use or by making backup copies. DRM is in common use by the entertainment industry ( e.g. , audio and video publishers). Many online stores such as OverDrive use DRM technologies, as do cable and satellite service operators. Apple removed DRM technology from iTunes around 2009. Typical DRM also prevents lending materials out through a library, or accessing works in

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4264-474: The copy protection in about an hour"; its purpose was to prevent large companies from purchasing one copy and easily distributing it internally. While reiterating his dislike of copy protection, Pournelle wrote "I can see Kahn's point". In 1989, Gilman Louie , head of Spectrum Holobyte , stated that copy protection added about $ 0.50 per copy to the cost of production of a game. Other software relied on complexity; Antic in 1988 observed that WordPerfect for

4346-425: The copy was successful, but eventually render themselves unplayable via subtle methods. Many games use the "code checksumming" technique to prevent alteration of code to bypass other copy protection. Important constants for the game - such as the accuracy of the player's firing, the speed of their movement, etc. - are not included in the game but calculated from the numbers making up the machine code of other parts of

4428-413: The copyright holder. The underlying principle was that the physical distribution of encrypted digital products should be completely unrestricted and that users of those products would be encouraged to do so. An early DRM protection method for computer and Nintendo Entertainment System games was when the game would pause and prompt the player to look up a certain page in a booklet or manual that came with

4510-448: The copyright holders for maintaining artistic controls , and supporting licenses' modalities such as rentals. Industrial users (i.e. industries) have expanded the use of DRM technologies to various hardware products, such as Keurig 's coffeemakers , Philips ' light bulbs , mobile device power chargers , and John Deere 's tractors . For instance, tractor companies try to prevent farmers from making repairs via DRM. DRM

4592-565: The cracked version soon found out that only early parts of the game were playable. The Uplay system works by having the installed game on the local PCs incomplete and then continuously downloading parts of the game code from Ubisoft's servers as the game progresses. It was more than a month after the PC release in the first week of April that software was released that could bypass Ubisoft's DRM in Assassin's Creed II . The software did this by emulating

4674-466: The digital marketplace. In 2012, the EU Court of Justice ruled in favor of reselling copyrighted games. In 2012, India implemented digital rights management protection. In 2012, webcomic Diesel Sweeties released a DRM-free PDF e-book. He followed this with a DRM-free iBook specifically for the iPad that generated more than 10,000 downloads in three days. That led Stevens to launch

4756-404: The game. If the code is changed, the calculation yields a result which no longer matches the original design of the game and the game plays improperly. Copying commercial games, such as this one, is a criminal offense and copyright infringement. Copying and re-supplying games such as this one can lead to a term of imprisonment. Think of a pirated game as stolen property. This game

4838-596: The game; if the player lacked access to the material, they would not be able to continue. An early example of a DRM system is the Content Scramble System (CSS) employed by the DVD Forum on DVD movies. CSS uses an encryption algorithm to encrypt content on the DVD disc. Manufacturers of DVD players must license this technology and implement it in their devices so that they can decrypt the content. The CSS license agreement includes restrictions on how

4920-471: The legal remedies available to publishers or authors whose copyrights are violated. Software usage models range from node locking to floating licenses (where a fixed number licenses can be concurrently used across an enterprise), grid computing (where multiple computers function as one unit and so use a common license) and electronic licensing (where features can be purchased and activated online). The term license management refers to broad platforms which enable

5002-569: The licenses. In 2007, the European Parliament supported the EU's direction on copyright protection. Asus released a soundcard which features a function called "Analog Loopback Transformation" to bypass the restrictions of DRM. This feature allows the user to record DRM-restricted audio via the soundcard's built-in analog I/O connection. Digital distributor GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) specializes in PC video games and has

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5084-429: The list. Many mainstream publishers continued to rely on online DRM throughout the later half of 2008 and early 2009, including Electronic Arts , Ubisoft , Valve , and Atari , The Sims 3 being a notable exception in the case of Electronic Arts. Ubisoft broke with the tendency to use online DRM in late 2008, with the release of Prince of Persia as an experiment to "see how truthful people really are" regarding

5166-399: The manual. Copy protection was activated not only at installation, but every time the game was executed. Several imaginative and creative methods have been employed, in order to be both fun and hard to copy. These include: All of these methods proved to be troublesome and tiring for the players, and as such greatly declined in usage by the mid-1990s, at which point the emergence of CDs as

5248-413: The media they purchase, as long as a "writer" is available that can write to blank media. All types of media require a "player"—a CD player, DVD player, videotape player, computer or video game console —which must be able to read the media in order to display it to a human. Logically, a player could be built that reads the media and then writes an exact copy of what was read to the same type of media. At

5330-500: The motion, but the Judge did not concur. Today copyright infringement is often facilitated by the use of file sharing . In fact, infringement accounts for 23.8% of all internet traffic in 2013. In an effort to cut down on this, both large and small films and music corporations have issued DMCA takedown notices, filed lawsuits, and pressed criminal prosecution of those who host these file sharing services. The EURion constellation

5412-579: The much publicized case versus Jon Johansen who they alleged wrote DeCSS . The case was dropped in January 2004. CSS decrypting software (such as DVD Decrypter , AnyDVD , and DVD Shrink ) allows a region-specific DVD to be copied as an all-region DVD. It also removes Macrovision , CSS, region codes , and user operation prohibitions . They also filed the suit DVD CCA v. Bunner against people who distributed DeCSS, seeking injunctions to stop further distribution based on trade secret claims. The injunction

5494-468: The necessity of which has been questioned. In 2014, the EU Court of Justice ruled that circumventing DRM on game devices was legal under some circumstances. In 2014, digital comic distributor Comixology allowed rights holders to provide the option of DRM-free downloads. Publishers that allow this include Dynamite Entertainment , Image Comics , Thrillbent , Top Shelf Productions , and Zenescope Entertainment . In February 2022, Comixology, which

5576-493: The primary video game medium made copy protection largely redundant, since CD copying technology was not widely available at the time. Some game developers , such as Markus Persson , have encouraged consumers and other developers to embrace the reality of unlicensed copying and utilize it positively to generate increased sales and marketing interest. Starting in 1985 with the video release of The Cotton Club ( Beta and VHS versions only), Macrovision licensed to publishers

5658-480: The purchase price. Commentators described these actions as Orwellian and compared Amazon to Big Brother from Nineteen Eighty-Four . Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos then issued a public apology. FSF wrote that this was an example of the excessive power Amazon has to remotely censor content, and called upon Amazon to drop DRM. Amazon then revealed the reason behind its deletion: the e-books in question were unauthorized reproductions of Orwell's works, which were not within

5740-547: The revenue produced by consumers who buy the product instead of acquiring it through casually copied media. Opponents of copy protection argue that people who obtain free copies only use what they can get for free and would not purchase their own copy if they were unable to obtain a free copy. Some even argue that free copies increase profit; people who receive a free copy of a music CD may then go and buy more of that band's music, which they would not have done otherwise. Some publishers have avoided copy-protecting their products on

5822-433: The software included a rootkit , which created a security vulnerability . When the nature of the software was made public much later, Sony BMG initially minimized the significance of the vulnerabilities, but eventually recalled millions of CDs, and made several attempts to patch the software to remove the rootkit. Class action lawsuits were filed, which were ultimately settled by agreements to provide affected consumers with

5904-467: The software on multiple machines, it has been attempted to tie the installed software to a specific machine by involving some unique feature of the machine. Serial number in ROM could not be used because some machines do not have them. Some popular surrogate for a machine serial number were date and time (to the second) of initialization of the hard disk drive or MAC address of Ethernet cards (although this

5986-433: The software", he said "It's wrong to copy-protect programs ... There ought to be some way to stop [piracy] without creating products that are unusable". Philippe Kahn of Borland justified copy-protecting Sidekick because, unlike his company's unprotected Turbo Pascal , Sidekick can be used without accompanying documentation and is for a general audience. Kahn said, according to Pournelle, that "any good hacker can defeat

6068-485: The specification, enforcement and tracking of software licenses . To safeguard copy protection and license management technologies themselves against tampering and hacking, software anti-tamper methods are used. Floating licenses are also being referred to as Indirect Licenses , and are licenses that at the time they are issued, there is no actual user who will use them. That has some technical influence over some of their characteristics. Direct Licenses are issued after

6150-445: The theory that the resulting inconvenience to their users outweighs any benefit of frustrating "casual copying". From the perspective of the end user, copy protection is always a cost. DRM and license managers sometimes fail, are inconvenient to use, and may not afford the user all of the legal use of the product they have purchased. The term copy protection refers to the technology used to attempt to frustrate copying, and not to

6232-413: The use of the word "piracy" in these situations, saying that publishers use the word to refer to "copying they don't approve of" and that "they [publishers] imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them". Certain forms of anti-piracy (such as DRM) are considered by consumers to control the use of the products content after sale . In

6314-408: Was "not good technology" because it reduced picture quality and consumers could easily bypass it, while Peter Chernin of Showtime said "we want to accommodate our subscribers and we know they like to tape our movies". Over time, software publishers (especially in the case of video games ) became creative about crippling the software in case it was duplicated. These games would initially show that

6396-511: Was a dialogue on consumer acceptability of DRM solutions in Europe that completed in 2008. In mid-2008, the Windows version of Mass Effect marked the start of a wave of titles primarily making use of SecuROM for DRM and requiring authentication with a server. The use of the DRM scheme in 2008's Spore led to protests, resulting in searches for an unlicensed version. This backlash against

6478-520: Was eventually denied because CSS was no longer a secret by the time litigation occurred. All hardware manufacturers (especially DVD player/burner manufacturers) implement DVD CCA-mandated enforcement features on their products as RPC (which is one of three restrictions in the Content Scramble System); some even go beyond that and implement additional features to restrict ripping , for example: Copy protection Copy protection

6560-609: Was passed in 1996. The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), was passed in 1998. The European Union enacted the Information Society Directive . In 2006, the lower house of the French parliament adopted such legislation as part of the controversial DADVSI law, but added that protected DRM techniques should be made interoperable, a move which caused widespread controversy in the United States. The Tribunal de grande instance de Paris concluded in 2006, that

6642-639: Was submitted to European governments in March 2007. As with much DRM, the CPCM system is intended to control use of copyrighted material by the end-user, at the direction of the copyright holder. According to Ren Bucholz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), "You won't even know ahead of time whether and how you will be able to record and make use of particular programs or devices". The normative sections were approved for publication by

6724-587: Was useful, writing in 1983 that "For every copy protection scheme there's a hacker ready to defeat it. Most involve so-called nibble/nybble copiers, which try to analyze the original disk and then make a copy". In 1985, he wrote that " dBASE III is copy-protected with one of those 'unbreakable' systems, meaning that it took the crackers almost three weeks to break it". IBM 's Don Estridge agreed: "I guarantee that whatever scheme you come up with will take less time to break than to think of it." While calling piracy "a threat to software development. It's going to dry up

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