Cody Taylor

Dr_Barnowl writes “Electronic Arts has posted a SecuROM de-authorization management tool. Once downloaded, the tool will search your drives for EA games infested with the draconian online DRM system, and help you download their respective individual de-activation tools. This isn’t a perfect solution, since it’s still possible to run out of activations in the event of hardware failure or other source of data loss, but since the announcement that this particular DRM system will be dropped for The Sims 3 , it would seem that EA has had a minor epiphany about DRM.” I’m sure EA’s hand was forced in part by the FTC’s recent warning against deceptive DRM practices. Hal Halpin of the Entertainment Consumers Association commented further on the issue, suggesting to developers that such measures need to be displayed on game boxes, and that standardization of EULAs could be next on the list.

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SpuriousLogic sends in a CNN report that begins “The Supreme Court has passed up a chance to examine how far states can go to restrict unsolicited e-mails in efforts to block spammers from bombarding computer users. The high court without comment Monday rejected Virginia’s appeal to keep its Computer Crimes Act in place. It was one of the toughest laws of its kind in the nation, the only one to ban noncommercial — as well as commercial — spam e-mail to consumers in that state. The justices’ refusal to intervene also means the conviction of prolific commercial spammer Jeremy Jaynes will not be reinstated.” Jaynes remains behind bars because of a federal securities fraud conviction unrelated to the matter of spamming.

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Hugh Pickens writes “The NY Times reports that the proliferation of free or low-cost games on the Web and for phones limits how high the major game publishers can set prices, so makers are sometimes unable to charge enough to cover the cost of producing titles. The cost of making a game for the previous generation of machines was about million, not including marketing. The cost of a game for the latest consoles is over twice that — million is typical, and it can be much more. Reggie Fils-Aime, chief marketing officer for Nintendo of America, says publishers of games for its Wii console need to sell one million units of a game to turn a profit, but the majority of games, analysts said, sell no more than 150,000 copies. Developers would like to raise prices to cover development costs, but Mike McGarvey, former chief executive of Eidos and now an executive with OnLive, says that consumers have been looking at console games and saying, ‘This is too expensive and there are too many choices.’ Since makers cannot charge enough or sell enough games to cover the cost of producing most titles, video game makers have to hope for a blockbuster. ‘The model as it exists is dying,’ says McGarvey.” As we discussed recently, OnLive is trying to change that by moving a big portion of the hardware requirements to the cloud. Of course, many doubt that such a task can be accomplished in a way that doesn’t severely degrade gameplay, but it now appears that Sony is working on something similar as well.

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A recent e-mail from Eastman Kodak Co. didn’t lead to a Kodak moment for Vanessa Daniele. It got her angry.

Engadget is reporting that the iPhone 3G is finally available contract-free if you are willing to pay a much higher premium. Without a contract consumers are looking at 9 for an 8GB model and 9 for the 16GB. AT&T has the added restriction that you must be an existing AT&T customer, but Apple (retail stores only, sorry) will sell one to anyone willing to pay the premium. This change brings the model much closer to the prevailing European model where phones are sold as hardware and the plans are handled completely separately.

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EFF’s stance is quite clear: DRM is harmful to consumers, it undermines competition and innovation, and unnecessarily preempts users’ fair uses of copyrighted content — all while making no appreciable dent in “digital piracy.” In fact, generally the only ones who are inconvenienced by DRM are legitimate customers.

Last year, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) proposed a plan to legalize the file sharing of copyrighted songs, which involved a small monthly fee to people using an internet connection. Critics of the plan complained that it amounted to another tax, and the Canadian recording industry said it violated copyright law. Now, as an anonymous reader writes, “The SAC has renewed its bid to legalize peer-to-peer file sharing in return for a levy on Internet service. The SAC is now calling for the plan to be voluntary, with both consumers and creators having the right to opt-out. ACTRA, the leading performer group in Canada, now says it is also supportive of a legalized approach with the prospect of extending the plan to video sharing.”

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Frankie70 writes “The Tata Nano — the car that caught the world’s imagination as the cheapest ever — will finally be rolled out commercially on Monday in Mumbai in a mega event organised by Tata Motors. Ben Oliver, contributing editor, Car Magazine, London test drove the car in December, 08. These were his first impressions. This was his verdict: ‘CAR’s first ride in the Tata Nano felt far more significant and exciting than a first drive in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, because this car’s importance is immeasurably greater. It won’t compete on dynamics or quality with European or Japanese city cars, but it doesn’t have to. What Tata has achieved at an unprecedented price is astonishing, although we’d guess it will cost Indian consumers closer to £1700 when it finally goes on sale, six months late, in March 2009.'”

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pnorth writes “A defunct payment gateway has exposed as many as 19,000 credit card numbers of US and UK consumers in a major worldwide breach. The data, held in Google cache, includes credit card numbers, CVVs, expiry dates, names and addresses. The credit card numbers are for accounts held with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Solo, Switch, Delta and Maestro/Cirrus. Within the address bars of the cached pages are URLs of e-commerce sites that have become victims of the breach. They include clothing, science, health, sports and photo imaging stores. The cause appears to be a known issue with the Google search engine, in which the pages of defunct web sites containing sensitive directories remain cached and available to anyone.”

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Symantec today formally unveiled its cloud-based storage service, Norton Online Backup, which allows you to manage through a Web interface up to five PCs on your home network under a single license.