Iranian Government Running A Warez Server?

from the watch-those-downloads dept

Torrentfreak has a somewhat amusing article about how it appears that the Iranian government is running a (well-organized) public warez FTP server with all sorts of infringing software, complete with serial codes, cracks and keygens. As the article notes, Iran's copyright law only protects Iranian copyright holders, and Iran has not signed on to WIPO treaties on copyright that would obligate it to respect others' copyrights.

Of course, for those of you who do participate in such activities, I wouldn't be so fast to jump on an Iranian server for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that, the Iranian government has been accused in the past of trying to install malware on the computers of those accessing its servers from countries it deems enemies.

Filed Under: copyright, iran, warez

Ubisoft's Despised DRM Continues To Annoy, Fail

from the how-is-that-working-out-for-you dept

We've been covering how Ubisoft's new DRM requires that users be constantly connected to the Internet if they want to play even the single-player portion of the game. That didn't exactly thrill customers to begin with, but the DRM was made considerably worse by the fact that many paying customers couldn't play the game they owned because Ubisoft's servers initially kept going down or their connection wasn't particularly reliable. Of course like all DRM'd games Ubisoft's games eventually wind up being cracked anyway -- which makes all the annoyances customers experience all the more pointless. Ubisoft's latest game to carry this DRM, Assasin's Creed 2, has also now been cracked, with hackers sending a personal message to Ubisoft in the pirated copy's .nfo thanking them for the challenge:

"Thank you Ubisoft, this was quiete [sic] a challenge for us, but nothing stops the leading force from doing what we do. Next time focus on the game and not on the DRM. It was probably horrible for all legit users. We just make their lifes [sic] easier."

This latest title lasted all of a month before being fully cracked (there was an earlier crack that worked, but only for certain localized versions), and while the crackers may not be the best spellers, they apparently understand that Ubisoft leeches value from their products by layering them with obnoxious DRM solutions. Hmm, perhaps if Ubisoft makes their next DRM solution even more annoying....

 

Filed Under: drm, warez
Companies: ubisoft