• DRM


From the Ubisoft always online DRM fail to the Avatar wont work with Blu-ray players disaster, DRM is a guaranteed method to annoy the shit out of paying customers. Why would I buy a product that is broken by design when I can download a fixed version for free? Why are you trying to prevent people from making a private copy which isn’t illegal in most countries in the first place?

• Unskippable shit

Ok, now I bought your product and want to watch, play, listen to the damn thing. I got it to run somehow despite you making it really hard with your fabulous DRM. What do I get? 10 minutes of freaking advertising. The best thing is I can’t even skip it. If I had downloaded the thing I would not have to cope with that. I could just watch or play it.

• FBI warnings

Are you fucking kidding me? I bought it. I am not the criminal. People who downloaded it don’t see that shit. And even if they did, they don’t care.

• Regional releases

Today is the release of this major Blockbuster movie I just have to watch. I go down to my local dealer only to hear that it is released in the states and that the rest of the world has to wait another month or so. Hmm, I could download it and watch it now, or I can wait until the hype is over, forget about it and don’t watch it at all.

• Price

$50 – 70 for a game which I play through in 10 hours? $39 for the Avatar Blu-ray? Thats a bit much, don’t you think? Btw didn’t anyone tell you that 20€ is not the same as $20?

• Stop behaving like huge dickheads

This might be most important point. Why would I buy stuff from people who I don’t like. Every time I read news about the MPAA or alike it’s about them treating customers like shit or some new piece of legislation to even further criminalising normal people which was created under the pressure of some anti-piracy lobby. Seriously your product is ok but if you don’t stop behaving like total assholes people aren’t going to buy your stuff anymore.

Those are the things I came up with. Am I being to harsh or did I miss something? Please let me know what you think in the comments.

As far as previous ‘cracks’ of Ubisoft’s new DRM system are concerned:

Both of Skidr0w’s releases show us they haven’t had a look (probably even didn’t find) the actual protection code and everything hints on em using parts of publicly collected ‘challenge/response’ pairs. Luckily Assassin’s Creed II is probably the only target ever where this approach of ‘emulating’ the server by a static lookup will yield any measurable success (due to a basic design flaw in an otherwise pretty neat idea of software protection). In fact, we considered this approach as generally too unreliable and ‘unworthy’ of a scene crack, so we didn’t care about doing it. Instead we opted for going for the arguably most challenging implementation of Ubisoft’s new DRM first (emulating actual server-side game code). So here it is: The first Ubisoft DRM crack!
@RELOADED:
Congrats on your recent advances in automating your Solidshield VM cracks. We actually respect that. However, we wonder why you didn’t go all the way and recompiled the fixed decompiler output to optimized native x86 code as we did as early as with Perry Rhodan (followed by Anno 1404).
Although we think there’s not much merit to discussing technical details in .nfos (mostly because it’s impossible for anyone lacking the skills and sources to fact-check these statements) we feel the need to preempt all that made-up “they-ripped-it-from-some-unprotected-tuvaluan-multi12-binary” bullshit that’s sure to follow:
We invite anyone who is able to and interested enough in this to check the history of scene-released Solidshield VM cracks taking into account things like availability of possible alternate sources for the protected code fragments at the time of release, similarity to compiled code (i.e. ‘copy & paste cracks’ from differently protected or unprotected binaries), the rebuilt code’s resemblence of the original VM instructions regarding sequence of mnemonics etc.pp. We’re pretty confident (read ‘100% certain’) you’ll come to the conclusion that we were first with respect to rebuilding actual Solidshield VM code.
Nvm, ‘mild respect’!

P.S.
Finally, there’s a chance of the good ol’ times coming back (when protections had to be dealt with on a per title basis by skilled individuals) and an opportunity of telling the sharpies from the fakers again. Thanks Ubi! (Yup, we’re actually serious about this)

Please feel free to ignore the nerdy dickishness that is inherent in those Scene talks. It is a large family and at the end of the day they all love each other again. The important point is, that from now on the race is on between the various release groups and my guess is that future titles with the Ubisoft DRM will be cracked much faster by the Scene.

Related posts:

1. Ubisoft DRM cracked by
   scene release group Skrid Row

Related posts:

1. Another docuish short movie:
   “When Copyright Goes Bad”

We went to London to tell the story of pirate radio – secret urban studios that transmit music from concrete tower blocks to the city, and met with DJs, and station managers, rappers and MCs. We met with DJ Scratcha from RINSE FM, MC Flirt from old school KOOL FM, J2k, Jammer, and Logan Sama. We uncovered how they stay underground and away from the authorities, while still setting the new music standard across London. We sailed to the source, where it all started – massive concrete and steel forts that sit at the mouth of the Thames River. We met the people who pioneered the spirit of pirate, and played the music that London wanted to hear. They set the standard, and when the authorities shut them down, pirate sounds went into the urban underground.

For centuries, copyright law has existed to protect creative production whilst promoting public access. But the digital age is challenging this balance and fundamentally changing the nature of the way we produce, access and distribute content. Suddenly, copyright rules no longer do what they are supposed to do. They have gone bad.

This is a film about how copyright has become one of the most important consumer issues of the digital age; why corporate lobbying risks criminalising the actions of hundreds of thousands of people; and what the future holds for the fight for fairer copyright laws.

Read what Skid Row had to say about their release after the break.

While we worked on this release, we noticed that several news webpages, forums, blogs etc. posted information, including a screenshot of a Ubisoft server attack message, which showed our group name.
First of all, that picture is a fake, nor would any member of Skid Row cause such riot, as we’re only here to compete with our game release competitors, nothing else. Neither do we encourage anyone to take such actions, no matter how much we agree, that DRM’s like this one, are only hurting those that do want to buy the game or have bought it.
Another point is those news medias, we mentioned before, post anything these days, no matter if it’s a joke or not. Beware what you’re posting, just because you want to prank someone.
This release is an accomplishment of weeks of investigating, experimenting, testing and lots of hard work.
We know that there is a server emulator out in the open, which makes the game playable, but when you look at our cracked content, you will know that it can’t be compared to that. Our work does not construct any program deviation or any kind of host file paradox solutions. Install game and copy the cracked content, it’s that simple.
Since we don’t want to see cheap imitations, we protected our work with a solid shield. Not because we want to deceive the majority, like certain people out there, but because we have in the past been an open book of knowledge for our competitors.
Real cracking is done by The Leading Force!

Related posts:

1. Another one bites the dust:
   The Settlers 7 cracked as well

Patent Absurdity explores the case of software patents and the history of judicial activism that led to their rise, and the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy. The film is based on a series of interviews conducted during the Supreme Court’s review of in re Bilski — a case that could have profound implications for the patenting of software. The Court’s decision is due soon…

The film is released under the Creative Commons license and can be streamed or downloaded here.

iSendr is an on-demand direct file transfer system. It makes transferring any size file between two people as simple as clicking a link!

There are hundreds of parodies of this “Downfall” clip. The studio, Constantin Films, has ordered takedowns of some of them, and eventually even had this parody removed from YouTube. In this clip, Hitler is the producer, and his lawyers tell him why he can’t do a DMCA takedown and how the EFF could stop him. He desperately searches for other ways to protect the movie.

Hitler, as “Downfall producer” orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.