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29-542: StarForce Technologies provides multiple protection options for protecting digital information, such as anti-cheat solutions, C++ obfuscation, generation of cryptographic obfuscation, optical disc DRM, limited activation number per machine/optical disk drive, audio and video files, and protection for digital media such as images and documents. The relevant protection brands are Audio/Video, C++ Obfuscator, Crypto, Content, Disc, E-m@il, MMOG, ProActive (additional versions for businesses and traders), and Universal. When StarForce 3.0

58-456: A StarForce-protected product is uninstalled. After the drivers are uninstalled, the service uninstalls itself as well. On January 1, 2006, Boing Boing claimed that StarForce was malware , mentioning several problems claimed to be associated with the protection system, including disk drive performance degradation and weakening of operating system security and stability. Tweakguides subsequently countered Boing Boing's claim, stating that there

87-628: A complex virtual machine . StarForce 3.0 has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers along with the protected product, which is generally not uninstalled along with the software ( Peter Jackson's King Kong being one exception). Colin McRae: DIRT , however, both ask the player for permission to install the drivers and include a help file with information on how to remove them. StarForce 3.0 drivers are installed with certain older game demos, freeware, and downloadable games, like TrackMania Nations . Their presence

116-399: A larger list, see the list of warez groups . Release groups are responsible for making warez releases. For example, they rip a movie from DVD, encode it to a video file and chop it up in smaller pieces before sharing it. They are at the top of the warez world. An announcement of the release shows up in pre databases after making the release available on their affiliate sites . Access to

145-494: A part of the IBM 305 RAMAC computing system. The random-access , low-density storage of disks was developed to complement the already used sequential-access , high-density storage provided by tape drives using magnetic tape . Vigorous innovation in disk storage technology, coupled with less vigorous innovation in tape storage, has reduced the difference in acquisition cost per terabyte between disk storage and tape storage; however,

174-423: A sequential read or write operation, after the drive accesses all the sectors in a track, it repositions the head(s) to the next track. This will cause a momentary delay in the flow of data between the device and the computer. In contrast, optical audio and video discs use a single spiral track that starts at the innermost point on the disc and flows continuously to the outer edge. When reading or writing data, there

203-480: A set of rules and regulations . The FBI have been combating warez groups with Operation: Cyberstrike, Operation Buccaneer , Operation Fastlink , Operation Safehaven and Operation Site Down . Similarly, the P2P group IMAGiNE has been disbanded due to law enforcement actions. Some game and software groups include Razor 1911 , Reloaded , DrinkOrDie , Pirates With Attitude , Class , Myth and Fairlight . For

232-456: A single category (music, movies, television, ...) or genre (e.g. metal music or graffiti). The group members have different roles. Most groups have one or more group leaders, aided by people with assignments such as supplier, cracker or ripper. Courier groups take releases and distribute them. This can be done using FXP to FTP sites. There are more couriers in the scene than there are crackers, suppliers and sites combined. Couriers are

261-652: A specific class of topsite users who earn their access by uploading new releases and filling requests. When a courier gains access to a topsite, they are often required to pass a trial test such as uploading a certain amount in a short period of time. Couriers compete (race) against each other for respect, credits , access to other topsites, and fun. Private couriers often operate as independent (iND) couriers. Some couriers band together to form courier groups which provide support and friendship through camaraderie. Although it may be noted that Couriers/Racers are looked down upon more than ever by affiliates and topsite staff with

290-421: Is divided into logical blocks (collection of sectors). Blocks are addressed using their logical block addresses (LBA). Read from or write to disk happens at the granularity of blocks. Originally the disk capacity was quite low and has been improved in one of several ways. Improvements in mechanical design and manufacture allowed smaller and more precise heads, meaning that more tracks could be stored on each of

319-900: Is intended to prevent crackers from using demo executables to help break retail executables (as the two will usually be quite similar). Currently (May 2014) the use of StarForce solutions became much easier for end users due to "driverless" security technology and binding to a computer. The company also is developing cloud services to protect content and e-mail that are designed to simplify the process of information protection used in everyday life. StarForce's customers include Russian Railways , Corel , 1C , Mail.ru , Aeroflot , SUN InBev Russia , AMD , ATC International, MediaHouse, Russobit-M , New Disc, Buka, Snowball, 2Play , GFI , Cenega and Akella . Some gamers have advocated boycotts of games or publishers known to use StarForce. These gamers claim that StarForce software causes system instability and crashes and that Protection Technology refuses to address

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348-470: Is no evidence of StarForce doing anything harmful. On March 5, 2006, a StarForce employee publicly posted a working link to a BitTorrent search engine listing of Galactic Civilizations II torrents during a discussion about the popularity of the game. Their action was publicized on various websites, including Digg , Neowin , and Penny Arcade . Stardock also posted an article, partially in response to inaccurate reporting of their own reasons for releasing

377-464: Is not automatically carried out. An official utility program exists to remove the StarForce driver from the system. The program is hosted at a third-party website with a link on the official StarForce website. Instructions for manual removal have also been provided by the community. Starting from StarForce 4.0 it includes a removal service. This service automatically uninstalls StarForce drivers after

406-527: Is not monetary gain, but the excitement of breaking rules and beating competitors, although at least two Scene groups have been asking for bitcoin donations, PoWeRUp and spamTV. Individual members of these groups are usually also the authors of cracks and keygens . There are warez groups publishing new content outside of the Scene, often referred to as P2P groups . They are a lot more accessible for people with access to new movies and are not limited to

435-455: Is sent from the computer processor to the BIOS into a chip controlling the data transfer. This is then sent out to the hard drive via a multi-wire connector. Once the data is received onto the circuit board of the drive, they are translated and compressed into a format that the individual drive can use to store onto the disk itself. The data is then passed to a chip on the circuit board that controls

464-421: Is simply the number of disk surfaces times the number of blocks/surface times the number of bytes/block. In certain legacy IBM CKD drives the data was stored on magnetic disks with variable length blocks, called records; record length could vary on and between disks. Capacity decreased as record length decreased due to the necessary gaps between blocks. Digital disk drives are block storage devices . Each disk

493-560: The floppy disk drive (FDD) and its removable floppy disk ; and various optical disc drives (ODD) and associated optical disc media. (The spelling disk and disc are used interchangeably except where trademarks preclude one usage, e.g., the Compact Disc logo. The choice of a particular form is frequently historical, as in IBM's usage of the disk form beginning in 1956 with the " IBM 350 disk storage unit ".) Audio information

522-474: The Scene: release groups and courier groups . Groups often compete, as being the first to bring out a new quality release can bring status and respect – a type of "vanity contest". The warez groups care about the image others have of them. ANALOG Computing observed in 1984 that software piracy did not make sense economically to those performing the software cracking . The primary motivation of warez groups

551-456: The access to the drive. The drive is divided into sectors of data stored onto one of the sides of one of the internal disks. An HDD with two disks internally will typically store data on all four surfaces. The hardware on the drive tells the actuator arm where it is to go for the relevant track, and the compressed information is then sent down to the head, which changes the physical properties, optically or magnetically, for example, of each byte on

580-422: The damage their software causes. In 2006, a $ 5 million lawsuit was filed against Ubisoft for using StarForce in their games on the allegations that StarForce compromises PC security, slows down PCs, causes crashes, and even damages optical drives. However, the case was dropped two years later due to lack of evidence. Ubisoft decided to investigate the extent of the StarForce boycott and ran a poll on their forums,

609-638: The disks. Advancements in data compression methods permitted more information to be stored in each of the individual sectors. The drive stores data onto cylinders, heads, and sectors . The sector unit is the smallest size of data to be stored in a hard disk drive, and each file will have many sector units assigned to it. The smallest entity in a CD is called a frame, which consists of 33 bytes and contains six complete 16-bit stereo samples (two bytes × two channels × six samples = 24 bytes). The other nine bytes consist of eight CIRC error-correction bytes and one subcode byte used for control and display. The information

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638-632: The drive, thus storing the information. A file is not stored in a linear manner; rather, it is held in the best way for quickest retrieval. Mechanically there are two different motions occurring inside the drive. One is the rotation of the disks inside the device. The other is the side-to-side motion of the head across the disk as it moves between tracks. There are two types of disk rotation methods: Track positioning also follows two different methods across disk storage devices. Storage devices focused on holding computer data, e.g., HDDs, FDDs, and Iomega zip drives , use concentric tracks to store data. During

667-478: The game without copy protection . StarForce later closed the thread, posting an apology and stating that the employee "just wanted to show that every non-protected game can be cracked". Warez group A warez group is a tightly organised group of people involved in creating and/or distributing warez such as movies, music or software ("warez") in The Scene . There are different types of these groups in

696-480: The increase of scripts that perform the couriers tasks automatically. Disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage ) is a data storage mechanism based on a rotating disk. The recording employs various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to the disk's surface layer. A disk drive is a device implementing such a storage mechanism. Notable types are hard disk drives (HDD), containing one or more non-removable rigid platters ;

725-454: The original software products is necessary to write cracks and keygens so they share original media among each other, usually using private sites and servers. Communication between members happens with IRC . Warez groups typically add NFO files with their releases. Due to the nature of the scene, not much is known about these groups. Most groups follow one of the different warez standards to prevent being nuked . Most groups are focused on

754-462: The outcome of which was against the use of StarForce. As a result, (along with general discontent on the web), in Heroes of Might and Magic V and GTR2 , StarForce 3.0 was replaced by SecuROM . Uninstalling a StarForce-protected game does not remove the StarForce driver from the system. The StarForce SDK provides functions for implementors to remove the driver during uninstall of the game, but this

783-436: The total cost of ownership of data on disk including power and management remains larger than that of tape. Disk storage is now used in both computer storage and consumer electronic storage, e.g., audio CDs and video discs ( VCD , DVD and Blu-ray ). Data on modern disks is stored in fixed length blocks, usually called sectors and varying in length from a few hundred to many thousands of bytes. Gross disk drive capacity

812-413: Was originally recorded by analog methods (see Sound recording and reproduction ). Similarly the first video disc used an analog recording method. In the music industry, analog recording has been mostly replaced by digital optical technology where the data is recorded in a digital format with optical information. The first commercial digital disk storage device was the IBM 350 which shipped in 1956 as

841-522: Was released, it initially provided extremely strong protection – the StarForce 3.0-protected game Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was uncracked for 422 days. It also marked a significant step up in the effort required to reverse engineer it. In March 2006 the warez group RELOADED released a vast array of documentation about how StarForce 3 works. Alongside many technical details, it revealed how several resource-intensive procedures were implemented, such as virtual file system and functions protected within

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