Remove "Phone Home" Copy Protection from Mass Effect and Spore

To:  Electionic Arts

The announcement of the inclusion of SecuROM protection in Mass Effect and Spore that "phones home" every ten days to ensure that installed software is valid is, to put it plainly, an insult to us, your loyal customers.

It has been demonstrated, time and again, that no matter what kind of protection is put in place, eventually software pirates will break it. This new form of protection will be no different. It will only unduly burden those of us that purchase and support your games.

Previous copy protection schemes, though flawed, at least placed control of the copy in the consumers’ hands. If the game did not work on a particular machine it could be resold. This new protection will take away that ability; permanently tying a particular copy of a game to one user forever. At the same time, this will also tie a user who has purchased a game to many factors beyond his or her control: internet connection stability and availability, state of the activation servers, and availability of the activation support hotline and their willingness to help.

We, the undersigned, for the reasons abovementioned, strongly suggest that the new copy protection be either not included in the games sold on store shelves, or at least removed immediately via patch.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Remove "Phone Home" Copy Protection from Mass Effect and Spore Petition to Electionic Arts was created by and written by David Spencer Zier (trekie9001@gmail.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.