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Items tagged with DRM
TorBrowser users could be in for a rude awakening thank to some rather nefarious Windows DRM-protected files that are making the rounds. It appears that malicious parties could use malware that is ensconced within DRM-protected files to reveal their true IP address. It should be noted that this latest attack vector requires both the use of Windows and the Tor Browser. As Hacker House reports, clicking on “these ‘signed WMV’ files do not present any alert to a user before opening them they can be used quite effectively to decloak users of the popular privacy tool TorBrowser with very little warning.”...
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Oculus just made a change to its software which removes a controversial “feature” that it added last month. The company has disabled its DRM that checked to make sure that Rift hardware was actually connected to a PC before games purchased and downloaded from the Oculus Store could be played. This DRM in effect killed workarounds like Revive, which allowed owners of the HTC Vive to play software originally designed to run on an Oculus Rift. Oculus today confirmed the removal of the DRM check. "We continually revise our entitlement and anti-piracy systems, and in the June update we've...
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Oculus suddenly finds itself embroiled in a game of cat and mouse as it attempts to keep titles exclusive to the Rift from running on competing VR headsets. Unfortunately for Oculus, its latest attempt at padlocking content with a DRM update backfired, and instead of stopping hacks like Revive from working, Oculus ultimately made it easier to pirate games. Let's back up a moment and see how we got to this point. At the end of last year, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey made what amounts to an open software statement by proclaiming, "If customers buy a game from us, I don't care if they mod it...
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Keurig’s attempt to lock its competitor’s coffee pods out of its brewers (all while running “The choice is yours” branding) has finally come to something of an end – though it’s not one that will appease some Keurig owners. The company announced that it is bringing back the My K-Cup in time for the holidays, giving its customers some freedom when choosing which coffee the Keurig will brew.“We want customers to be able to brew every brand, any brand of coffee in their machine, and bringing the My K-Cup back allows that,” Keurig CEO Brian Kelley told analysts in a call this week, reported Fortune....
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I drink more coffee than I'd like to admit. Most of it is black, since I like the idea of not overdosing on sugar throughout the day, although on regular occasion I do dump a bit of flavored creamer in there for a treat. Surprisingly, there's an additive that's all the rage right now that I somehow never thought to add: delicious, fat-free DRM. Admittedly, that might be because I prefer to have freedom when it comes to something as dead simple as coffee. Keurig sees it a different way, as its Keurig 2.0 system, released last summer, introduced a digital rights management mechanism. The launch didn't...
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If you ever have any doubts about the success of PC gaming, look no further than Steam. On any given day, a bunch of different content gets released - from full titles to DLC - and it just never seems to slow down. For proof of that, Valve says that over the course of the past nine months, it's added over 1,300 titles to the service, and Steam as a whole now has over 100,000,000 active accounts. With such major growth and general success, I've found it odd for a while that Valve wouldn't update Steam's main website. Sure - it's suitable enough, but a fresh coat of paint can help keep things fresh....
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Well this is surprising (and in a totally good way) -- Comixology, the cloud-based digital comic book distributor founded in 2007 and acquired by Amazon this past April, is now allowing customers to backup comics stripped of Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection. DRM-free backups are available to save in PDF or CBZ format. "We're excited to make this DRM-free backup option available to our customers and publishers today," Comixology co-founder and CEO David Steinberger said in a statement. "Our customers can keep a copy locally and continue to do their reading on Comixology in our industry-changing...
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When Microsoft announced that it was canceling the much-hated always-on Xbox One requirements, a collective cheer went up from the Internet -- and also, a collective grumble. A number of players were ready to get rid of physical discs altogether, looked forward to the Family Share features that Microsoft had promised, and generally wanted a console that would move forward into digital distribution, even if it came at the cost of giving up privileges today. Those fans have put together a Change.org petition calling for Microsoft to add back the features that it removed from the console. The petition...
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Ever since Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One in May, the user community has raised holy hell about the 24-hour mandatory online check in, the loss of used game sales, and the onerous online requirements that prohibited game or console imports into countries where the Xbox One service hasn't officially launched. Microsoft's entire E3 demo was buried thanks to a $499 price tag and a crushing video from Sony. Throwing military users under a bus by insisting they just buy an Xbox 360 was apparently the final straw. Today, Microsoft threw in the towel. The Xbox One will not require a 24-hour check in....
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A couple of months ago, while a lot of people were up in arms over the Xbox One's potential "always on" requirement, Gears of War creator and former Epic Games developer Cliff Bleszinski said, quite simply, "#dealwithit". Unlike so many others, he simply didn't see the reason why an "always on" console was a bad thing, insinuating that it's the "world we live in". Given this, it should come as no surprise that Cliffy B is also in favor of Xbox One's used game DRM - that is, where a disc-based game can be traded only once. On Twitter, and via Computer and Videogames, he defends the scheme by saying,...
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While both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are a ways off from their release, I can already tell you one thing to expect: neither console is going to be fun as the previous-generation. Why? It's simple: consoles used to be about gaming, plain and simple. Today, consoles are becoming more like PCs; they're being infused with TV, movies, music and other content. Sure, more stuff to do could be interpreted as "better", but what we're also getting are additional "protective" headaches, such as DRM, rumored for the Xbox One and now the PlayStation 4. Last week, Joel wrote up a great editorial that explains...
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Years ago, DRM was finally kicked out of the digital music scene. And consumers rejoiced heartily. But DRM is still a major, major factor across the entire spectrum of digital content -- be it UltraViolet for movies, or DRM filters embedded onto Blu-ray Discs, and most things in between. Now, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is responsible for coming together and putting forth Web standards, has published a draft for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). What's that, you ask? It's a structure that'll allow DRM content to be displayed in the browser, without plug-ins like Flash or Silverlight...
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Whether it's software, games, movies or even books, piracy is rampant. There's no denying that, and there's no one that understands the harmful effects of it better than the content creators themselves. Over the years, we've seen some humorous attempts at trying to sway the pirate towards becoming a paying customer, and there's probably little doubt that some have worked. In recent memory, Serious Sam 3 introduced a monster only in the pirated version of the game that hunted you down indefinitely and was impossible to kill. There's also Take On Helicopters, which corrupted textures on purpose...
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For the past nine days, Maxis has been caught in a firestorm of epic proportions. Having failed to beta test the game appropriately or account for actual server loads, Maxis' SimCity servers disintegrated under the onslaught of people wanting to play a game they paid for. Since launch day, company executives and representatives have remained steadfast on one point -- the game must be played online. "With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible...
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