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Monday, November 10, 2008
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Electronic Arts Sued Over SecuROM DRM Protection
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Two new suits were filled with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Electronics Arts (EA), targeting the company's use of the SecuROM digital rights management (DRM) technology in some of the company's games.
The first class action concerns EA's "Spore Creature Free Trial Edition" game. The trial and free for download version of the game "secretly" installs a DRM software program (Sony DADC 's SecuROM) on the computers of all the persons who downloaded the game. According to the class action, consumers are not informed of the existence of the DRM software in the trail version of the game they download and once it has been installed, it cannot be completely uninstalled unless consumers format their PC.
The suit also includes information about the way the SecuROM acts once installed on a PC.
"SecuROM will disable certain programs that the designers of the SecuROM program believe that computer users should not own, or posses, or operate on their computer," reads the suit, referring mainly to CD-ROM emulating software. It also mentions the fact that SecuROM disables CD/DVD burners found on computers.
The complete document is available here.
The second class, which was filled by the same lawyer, concerns the software being installed with The Sims 2: Bon Voyage expansion pack, released a year ago. In the latter case, the person claimed problems with their PC arose after installing the expansion. These include disruptions of antivirus programs and firewalls, software conflicts and registry corruption, according to the suit.
In both cases, the Plaintiffs are looking for an impressive $5million from EA. Both legal actions were unveiled by the Gamepolitics.com web site.
EA had been also hit by another suit last September for the "Spore" game title.
The company has not commented on released any official statement on the issue. |
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