Probably as disturbing is the fact that it is possible to overcome the problem by changing the date of the system to one prior to January 28. If this was supposed to be some kind of protection it was more than useless considering that the system data is checked for the data and not some server on the Internet.

It does look more like a blunder of someone forgetting to renew the certificate for the game. That again leaves the question unanswered why the game needs a certificate in first place.

No word yet on the piracy front but bets are 10:1 that the pirated copies of Gears of War are working just fine. If you bought the game you can either change your system date or wait for an official patch which is said to be out soon. Epic Fail so to speak..

Walmart started selling music back in August 2007. The music was protected by DRM for the first six month after which Walmart decided that the hassle was not worth it. DRM was removed from all songs and users were able to purchase DRM free songs from then on.

The announcement that Walmart would shut down its DRM servers was send by email to all customers who purchased songs protected by DRM from one of the biggest companies in the world. The consequence for the user is dire. It is possible to play the songs on the authorized computer but it will not be possible to burn them or listen to them on a new computer after October 9, the day the servers are shut down.

Walmart is suggesting to burn the music to CD to be able to move them to a new computer. The first thing that is odd about this recommendation is a general observation. DRM was allegedly implemented to prevent the unauthorized copying of protected media. If users are able to burn the media to CD and rip those CDs back to a computer then the system failed miserably. What’s the purpose of protecting files with DRM if anyone can bypass it that easily?

The second odd thing about this is that a company like Walmart is seemingly not capable of providing a better solution to their customers. They simply pull the plug and the customers have to see how they can access their purchased music in the future.

Lastly what happens to customers who would like to re-download a song that they have purchased at the music store? Will they be able to download it again DRM free or will Walmart simply state that the song is no longer available? A commenter at the Boing Boing site mentioned that he tried to download songs that he purchased again from Walmart but was not able to do so because they were no longer available.

The only positive aspect is that another company is getting rid of DRM. The feeling remains though that it has more to do with the complexity of DRM and the additional costs of the servers and support than fulfilling customer demand.

Well Spore was destined to be different. If you look at the Amazon ratings of the game you currently see 723 reviews. 22 five star reviews, 13 four star reviews, 5 three star reviews, 18 two star reviews and 673 one star reviews. One star reviews are the lowest ratings possible for products at Amazon.

One could think that reviewers did not like the game and decided to give it a low rating at Amazon. This is apparently not the case. The majority of the reviewers are giving it a one star rating because of its DRM protection.

Spore has to be activated over the Internet so that the user can play the game. Electronic Arts first wanted to implement a DRM system that required regular authentications but removed that after huge protests broke out.

So every user has to activate the game over the Internet which is strange for a single player game. The number of activations are limited to three and users have to call (!) support for additional activations. Uninstallation won’t give an activation back. If the user installs the operating system anew and the game afterwards that’s another activation, even if it’s the same computer.

We have also seen what happens if a company that sold DRM media turns off the servers that are responsible for the authentication. It happened to giants like Google Microsoft and Yahoo before so who can say that the EA game will authenticate in ten years?

I think it is interesting to see that a dedicated base of users can control the rating system of such a big company like Amazon. Amazon will probably remove most of the ratings as they have done in the past but it should keep a few users from buying the game.

Is it a good game? I honestly do not know and since I’m still on an EA games boycott I could care less.