Two weeks ago, a 43-year old Japanese woman has been jailed for the murder of her virtual divorced husband. Her avatar was married to a avatar in “Maple Story“, a kind of Korean Second Life. Her virtual husband divorced without notifications. As retaliation, she logged in the account of the owner of her divorced avatar and destroyed the avatar. It seems that he shared with her his account login credentials.

She has been charged for illegal computer access and destruction of digital information. She may face up to five year jail or $5000 (3500€) fine. Interestingly, if her avatar would have killed her divorced avatar within the metaverse, then she would not be prosecuted. Death in metaverses is common. You may murder in Second Life. You may be killed by monsters or other characters in World Of Warcraft. That is the game. But here, she destroyed the avatar data (different from killing the avatar). An avatar may represent a lot of time investment, emotional investment and sometimes even monetary investment. The death (following metaverse’s rules) of an avatar may be accepted by his owner (sometimes with difficulty). But this destruction of data may represent a moral wrong and even financial loss.

Regardless of the morale judgment of this story, this story highlights a coming big problem. How will real world rule the interaction with metaverses. Metaverses will take an increasing importance in our life. Current regulations are not adapted to this coming challenge. Even metaverses are not ready. Many challenges for security in these worlds are needed. In many cases, the threats will come from the real world.

Nintendo has just launched its new portable console DSi. It has a 17% larger screen than DS, a 0.3 megapixel camera and the possibility to download and store games.

Interestingly, it seems that Nintendo took also this opportunity to fight back the linker-based piracy. First reports announce that the most spread linkers (R4, …) do not work anymore with this version.

Thus, good move from Nintendo. The question is how long will it resist.

Thanks Yves

Last week, I presented the crusade anti DRM against the new simulation gain Spore. In any case, DRM did not stop me to purchase it. My personal opinion is that it is a great game (at least as I like them ;-)) Hereafter are some of my first creatures.

Visit Spore.com

The installation requires connection to Internet. Without initial registration on the server, the game will not start ( This is frustrating when installing in a train 🙁) Once registered, there is no more need of Internet, or of the genuine disk. Nevertheless, online connection offers many goodies: possibility to share creatures, bio diversity on the planet due to creatures from other players, possibility to post videos of your creatures on YouTube, automatic patch installing.

A 86Mb path is already available. In theory, it is possible to do it manually without the official download manager. Nevertheless, I did not succeed. The patch did not find my official Spore version. When patching through the game, it was painless.

A naughty idea of mine: What about issuing an application with a severe known flaw. The patch release would need online registration. Furthermore, the patch would check that the copy protection elements are not tampered and still in place. Of course, it may not be pleasing customers. Furthermore, it may not be legal.

A cracked version is already available. It seems to be a good success when looking the number of seeds and leeches. It works. The crack does bypass the registration phase. Of course, it also provides a key generator. I did not test if the patch works on it.

Conclusion: Online connection to Spore server does bring so many goodies that may be Electronic Arts (EA) could have avoided the limitations to three computers. Online real time checking of the uniqueness by the server may have been sufficient. EA will issue next year another blockbuster: The Sims 3. Will EA use the same DRM policy for it?

Spore, the long awaited simulation game from Electronic Arts has generated a huge buzz and fury. Probably not from the type EA was expecting.
Spore is protected by SecuROM and requires online authentication of the genuine disc every ten days. Between these 10 days, you do not need to put the disc in the drive for authentication (This is extremely convenient. I hate the games where you need to have the disc in the drive. For frequent travelers it is annoying) The game cannot be installed more than three times, else you would have to phone to EA support. Some people are concerned that their copy would be dead if EA would not anymore operate the authentication server.

The fact that Spore would be protected by “DRM” was known for months (and provoked already some waves in the game community). Nevertheless, since its launch, Spore has been the target of anti-DRM aficionados. Interestingly, they use a new Denial Of Evaluation attack. The evaluation comments on Amazon.com are spoiled by voluntarily negative critics. At the time of editing, the score was less than 1 star for more than 1400 comments. Negative comments were about DRM. At the same time, the evaluation for the Nintendo DS (not affected by the DOE) was 4.75 stars!

Will this “attack” be efficient? I am doubtful. It seems that Spore is a really innovative great game. Thus, gamers who love this type of game (simulation + MMOPG) will go. Negative comments, only about DRM will not reduce the appealing of the game. Will “DRM” block some users? Of course, some people will use it as an excuse to justify the use of illegal version. The ISO file and the crack was available several days before the commercial launch of the game on main P2P tracker sites

Reading forum is instructive. My preferred one is the person who purchases an official copy but install a cracked one for convenience. He uses it with clear conscience.

It will be interesting to see if this campaign will impact the sales of Spore? If other game editors will reduce the use of “DRM”? Is DRM the right language for SecuROM and likes?

In any case, I will soon play Spore. Did someone already test it?

10-sep: An error did display only half of this ticket yesterday. Sorry for the inconvenience. During this night, about 500 additional negative comments were added on amamzon