StarFarce threatens Doctorow
p2p news / p2pnet: Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow is in trouble with StarFarce for criticizing its products
The company, which claims to be the, "Ultimate solution for licensed software developers and publishers,". has threatened to sue him and says it’s, "sworn out a complaint against me with the FBI," he says on Boing Boing. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
StarForce threatens to sue me for criticizing its products
By Cory Doctorow – Boing Boing
Yesterday, I posted about StarForce, a harmful technology used by game companies to restrict their customers’ freedom. StarForce attempts to stop game customers from copying their property, but it has the side-effects of destabilizing and crashing the computers on which it is installed.
Someone identifying himself as "Dennis Zhidkov, PR-manager, StarForce Inc." contacted me this morning and threatened to sue me, and told me that he had contacted the FBI to complain about my "harassment."
If you’re looking for reasons to boycott StarForce-crippled games (besides the obvious ones), you might add their use of bullying legal threats to your list.
From: "Dennis Zhidkov" <denis.zhidkov@star-force.com>
Date: January 31, 2006 9:55:40 AM BST
To: "doctorow@craphound.com" <doctorow@craphound.com>
Subject: StarForce Response to Cory Doctorow
StarForce Inc. response to Mr. Cory Doctorow
Dear Sir, calling StarForce "Anti-copying malware" is a good enough cause to press charges and that is what our corporate lawyer is busy doing right now. I urge you to remove your post from http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/30/anticopying_malware_.html because it is full of insults, lies, false accusations and rumors. Your article violates approximately 11 international laws. Our USlawyer will contact you shortly. I have also contacted the FBI , because what you are doing is harassment.
Sincerely,
Dennis Zhidkov
PR-manager
StarForce Inc.
www.star-force.com
Here’s my reply: "Thank you for your response. I have appended it to my original post and have forwarded it to the Chilling Effects project to be part of the permanent record of abusive attempts by companies to silence their critics."
Update: Looks like this isn’t the first time Mr Zhidkov has sent legal threats to critics of this company — check out this email he sent CNet, which opens "Dear Sir, calling StarForce ‘nefarious Rootkit/Virus’ is a good enough cause to press charges. How do you like that for a start?" (Thanks, Alexander!)
Update 2: Fiona sez, "I just contacted a friend who works in the testing department of the UK branch of the worlds largest games publisher, and they hadn’t heard of it! I now think they have the (very healthy, by all accounts) fear of god about what this thing could do to peoples systems. They’re testing a third-party game that uses it, and have found the drivers on their test box. They’re not happy about having it on an open test system,"
Update 3: Avi sez, "Their business seems to depend on people not knowing how much they suck. For example, I was on a private beta list for a new game I won’t mention by name due to NDA – but the game authors agreed to drop StarForce after an outcry from the community. You don’t often hear the stories about game developers dropping StarForce in favor of their customer."
February 1st, 2006 at 7:37 pm
“had contacted the FBI to complain about my “harassment.”
Anyonw can complain about anything to anyone, be it FBI, the president or the pope. Means absolutely nothing.
February 1st, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Me thinks Dennis will have the opportunity to send out plenty more threating e-mails in response to the buttload of nastygrams he will undoubtedly receive…
Here’s that e-mail address one more time if you missed it.
denis.zhidkov@star-force.com
February 1st, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Star Force was an Arcade game I played in the 80s, can THEY be forced to change name based on a trade mark legal issue? I am asking just because I like to hurt assholes. Star-Force deserves all bad publicity it can get, if the guy being sued is actually saying the truth. Anyhow, DRMs and copy protection are only in the best interest of manufactures and sellers, not of consumers. I currently buy only music CDs, granted they aren’t copy protected, so that I can rip the tracks to ogg format. Corporations use of DRM is scaring people away.
February 2nd, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Why is law suits the first course….what every happened to bribery or reason.
February 2nd, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Strange his name is “Dennis” but his e-mail address is “Denis” like “Penis”
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:07 am
StarForce is a Russian software company that claims to have offices is Moscow, China, and Cyprus. The e-mail sent to Cory doctorow is very typical Russian blather and bluster in an attempt to intimidate.
It’s not surprising that their ‘protection’ scheme operates much like a virus, as the former USSR had a very keen interest in such things and spent a great deal money researching and developing such things as ‘munitions’ in the end stages of the Cold War. There was a great deal of emphasis on these ‘techniques’ in the State run technological universities at the time.
This individual is very likely wholly unfamiliar with international law, and certainly US Law. I doubt he filed a report with the FBI unless he submitted something via the FBI’s website. I doubt he actually went to the US Embassy in Moscow to file a report with the DoJ rep there.
His ‘USLawyer’ is probably his cousin Mishka, who was a lawyer in Russia, but now lives in Brighton Beach and runs a shady on-line camera store out of the back of an autobody shop on Coney Island Avenue.
The only thing that’s likely to come of this will be a few more abrasive e-mails, but no lawsuit is ever going to get filed against anyone. It’s all just an empty threat, not unlike a certain DRM company and the “shift key” incident.
–TurboGeek