Starforce, against the people?
Revised: February 2, 2006
Just to make things clear with this whole starforce vs. the people case. I shall write from a balanced viewpoint and try to explain matters to the best of my abilities with the current data. I shall begin by explaining what starforce actually is, what it does and how I think it goes about achieving this, I shall also comment on what it doesn?t do, and why. If you read this please comment on the version in my blog and if you have any suggested alterations they will be happily received.
Starforce, the copy protection software is basically a device controller (driver) that is stealthily installed into your operating systems core when a starforce protected game disk is first read. It is the fact that the drivers install themselves with no warning in this manor that causes alarm in the educated computer communities, starforce incorrectly stereotypes these intellectuals and groups them with the criminal world by grouping all educated computer users (the majority of whom are legitimate software users with no history of hacking) as ?hackers?. This is quite clearly prejudice on Starforce?s part and it causes the less computer savvy users to think that anyone complaining about starforce are simply hackers, when a large majority are simply educated computer users who can understand that what the starforce copy protection software is doing sounds fishy ? to summarise: no copy protection software should need to install anything on a customers computer that interferes with the inner workings of any of the components. Reasons for which I shall detail later in this article.
As I said above, the educated computer users are alarmed by what the starforce copy protection software is doing, quite simply because of how it works. Starforce (the copy protection program) installs four hidden drivers onto a customer?s computer. These drivers actively interfere with how your operating system talks with its hardware components ? this is very dangerous territory indeed, because most drivers that are designed to do this are designed to work with specific deceives, thus you get such things as graphics drivers and raid drivers. Starforce drivers are not hardware specific and so have the ability cause your hardware to work outside its safety margins which can then lead to irreparable damage being done to the device. For example: starforce interferes with how your operating system talks to your cdrom drive, causing the operating system to see device errors when none are occurring, in response to this windows steps down the device speed eventually it steps down to 16Bit mode. Most modern cd drives are not designed for this mode and so crash, which can in the best case cause a failed cd burn and in the worst case destroy the drive.
As of writing this I have only heard of the starforce drivers damaging cd/DVD reader/writers and hard drives. Gunark has one of his SATA hard drives destroyed by the drivers after attempting to use the official starforce remove tool, and he isn?t alone prepaq has had issued where the starforce drivers have stopped his DVD drive from working and analogue had a scsi drive destroyed. I myself have had issues with my DVD burner not functioning as it should since installing a starforce protected game.
Due to the nature of starforce copy protection many educated computer users are worried about how this will affect their computer. I must say that although I have had it adversely affect my computer I am part of the minority of people who have had problems. This could simply be because out of the vast number of computer users in the world, only the minority know the ins and outs of their computer, and its that minority who are noticing the problems and speaking up about them. It is the nature of the copy protection software and how it works that is alarming. When you install a program you expect that all it installs is what you want it to install, the game or the program files needed for the application to function, and only the files that are need. You don?t expect foreign drivers to be installed into the root of your operating system from where they pose a potent security risk by creating a nice little back door for any malicious program or code to abuse.
What the starforce drivers seem to actually do is provide a barrier between your operating system and its hardware devices. In short I see it as a hardware driver, controller driver. It is designed to stop you from copying a game by controlling how your cd burner works, it would appear that it works actively while a game is running and contrary to what Starforce say many user reports would lead to proof of it actually running passively on your computer interfering with your system regardless of what?s running ? only one other type of program I can think of does this and that is a virus.
Unfortunately starforce is categorising all computer users into one category and that is ?potential hacker?. I find this insulting as many others should; as I have no intention of ever hacking, I buy all of the games I play and take pride in my small collection mainly because I see cd and box art as a form of art and like to show my collection off. Because of Starforce?s unfair stereotyping of every computer user as ?potential hacker? is given them the ability to call anyone who complains a ?hacker?. This is wrong, if I complain I want to be a ?concerned customer? not a ?whiney little hacker?. Because I am a concerned customer, I do not wish to have software installed on my computer against my knowledge, especially software that messes with my hardware controllers to the extent of potentially damaging my expensive components; and you know what the sad fact is? Starforce copy protection does literally nothing to prevent piracy of the games that it ?protects?. All the pirates need to do is rip out the copy protection and re-publish. So what does the copy protection achieve? Nothing much, just a week at most delay on cracked software being published and a lot of problems on user?s computers.
To summarise, from a computer experts point of view: it is extremely worrying the way that starforce attempt to provide copy protection, these drivers pose a security risk and apparently a very real risk to system hardware. I would recommend against using the remove tool they supply and if you can reinstall windows to provide a fresh starforce free copy otherwise if reinstalling windows is for some reason implausible use the remove tool at your own risk. If you must buy starforce protected games, buy them for a consol or not at all in the case of the latter write a formal letter to the publishers to explain why and maybe something will be done.
Copy protection is all well and good, but should not be exercised at the risk of the end users computer, data and privacy.
Lastly as a footnote, doesn?t this all remind you of the Sony root kit ordeal?
This article is not finnished, I have tried to write from a unbiased view even though I am firmly against the methods that starforce use to secure games. If you have read this article please leave a comment on my blog to let me know 
Usefull links: Boycott Starforce Homepage | The Boycott Forums | GameSpot Forum Post | Starforce Game List
I wrote a follow up which can be seen here. […]