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Ubisoft Plans Mandatory Online Authentication

Ubisoft has announced it’s replacing its StarForce digital rights management application for a newer method. Ubisoft’s new PC DRM solution will feature no CD checks or installation limits and pack support for ‘cloud’ online saved game storage but will require players be online to authenticate before playing. Players will be required to login to their Ubi.com account to authenticate each and every time they wish to play–and there will be no support for offline play at all. The DRM platform will debut with the closed beta test of Blue Byte city-building strategy The Settlers 7. While details are currently unclear, it seems the platform will feature in all feature Ubisoft PC releases – though apparently not all will support cloud saves.

One very interesting benefit of this new account management system is how it handles save games. Your saves will be stored remotely on Ubi servers, allowing access to your game saves on any machine. Steam offers a similar service for select games, but this will be available for the majority of Ubisoft’s PC titles.
So what’s the downside? Since authentication is now handled through your Ubi.com account, you’ll always need to connect to your Ubi.com account to authenticate before playing. While it’s hard to conceive of PC gamers being stranded without an Internet connection, those situations do come up, particularly when traveling. We asked about the potential backlash to this authentication platform requiring an Internet connection. “We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection,” Wilkinson replied.

Sounds a lot like discrimination to me.

Windows Media DRM Cracked…Again

Microsoft Corp. is once again on the defensive against hackers after the launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock copy-protected digital music and movies. The latest version of the FairUse4M program, which can crack Microsoft’s digital rights management system for Windows Media audio and video files, was published online late Friday. In the past year, Microsoft plugged holes exploited by two earlier versions of the program and filed a federal lawsuit against its anonymous authors. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after failing to identify them. The third version of FairUse4M has a simple drag-and-drop interface. PC users can turn the protected music files they bought online – either a la carte or as part of a subscription service like Napster – and turn them into DRM-free tunes that can be copied and shared at will, or turned into MP3 files that can play on any type of digital music player.

“We knew at the start that no digital rights management technology is going to be impervious to circumvention,” said Jonathan Usher, a director in Microsoft’s consumer media technology group, in a phone interview. Usher said Microsoft employs a full-time team to combat such breaches, and that the Windows Media DRM system was designed to be quickly modified to shut down this type of attack. He did not say how many songs have been stripped of copy protection, or how long it will take for Microsoft to combat the hack again. But the music industry is aware of the nature of Microsoft’s technology, he said, and added that he does not expect record labels to lose patience with the process.

The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group, declined to comment. While Usher said Microsoft will remain committed to copy protection, attitudes around the industry are starting to shift.

Apple Inc. has modified its own online store, iTunes, to block similar efforts to break its FairPlay copy protection scheme. But Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs, started calling for an end to digital music-locking earlier this year.

“There are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music,” Jobs wrote in an online essay in February. “They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game.”

Apple’s iTunes store started selling DRM-free music from EMI Group PLC’s catalog in May. The same month, Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. said its much-anticipated digital music store will sell tracks in the unprotected MP3 format.

Josh Bernoff, an industry analyst at research group Gartner Inc., said he expects music DRM to fade out in the next couple of years as record companies begin to realize selling unprotected tracks online won’t hurt sales. After all, Bernoff said, the same tracks are already circulating unprotected, copied from CDs and on file-sharing networks.