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EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

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Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#41

Post by tjoff »

Luyt wrote: post #5

This is why I install my games on a separate bootable harddisk, which I only boot when I want to play a game.

Reboot to play a game is way too much of a hassle (IMO). What I'd want is a hypervisor that could handle graphics acceleration for one virtual machine at a time. When I wanted to play I just switched virtual machine and moved the ability to accelerate graphics from my workstation virtual machine to the gaming virtual machine (similar to the way some notebooks that have an integrated and a more powerful external graphics card can switch between them during runtime).

That would be a dream come true for me (if it worked well).

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#43

Post by maximilianburke »

chaostheory wrote: post #39
maximilianburke wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below. It doesn't seem like it's much…

> But there’s a significant difference. Valve’s policy is self-restricted to anything on your PC directly relating to its own products. EA’s is so broad that it gives the publisher permission to scan your entire hard drive, and report back absolutely anything you may have installed, and indeed when you may use it, and then pass that information on the third parties. So currently Valve uses that clause mainly to scan…

EA also updated Origin's EULA after that article was posted:

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/26/ea-revises-origin-eula-dat...

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#44

Post by click170 »

ryanhuff wrote: post #12
click170 wrote: post #9

This sounds like the kind of thing that some MBA came up with; Suit: "And in the Terms of Service, add some note so that we can use their personal info for marketing." Cubicle-ee: "That's a little sleezy and sounds like it may backfire.." Suit: "Nonsense, nobody reads the ToS and everybody is data mining people's personal info these days, they can't get mad at us without getting mad at everyone else too. Look at Goog…

Why don't you throw lawyers under the bus while you are at it. After all, we know that everybody but coders are looking to screw the customer.

No no, I think you misunderstand my point.

It's the suits job, nay legal obligation in the case of a publicly held company, to maximize profits. More and more frequently we're seeing profits take precedence over privacy and customers, and I don't think that would have been possible as a bottom-up change coming from coders. No, this change came from the top, and coming from the top it spread to the tops of other companies like wildfire.

Also, I have no hesitations about throwing lawyers under the bus as well. They're the front line in the battle that these companies are waging against, what are often times paying customers, never mind that they're paying customers too and that they're ruining the future for our and their own children. What, you think it's just a matter of perspective and a lawyer sees things differently than I do? Show me one lawyer who has no qualms about arguing that a corporation is a person, and I'll show you a person who's sold their soul.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#45

Post by corncobpipe »

jonursenbach wrote: post #37
corncobpipe wrote: post #33

I admit I haven't read all the comments here so I apologize if someone else has made the following comment. This story is nonsense. Install Process Explorer ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653 ), launch Process Explorer, install Origin, launch Origin, log in with your username/password. Let Process Explorer run for an hour or so and filter out any results where the Origin directory is being rea…

They may not actually be collecting data right now, but the ToS explicitly grants them the ability to do so at some point in the future.

People are freaking out on this like it's already happening. I point out how you can monitor the program and now I'm getting a negative feedback? Fuck this place.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#46

Post by shaggyfrog »

nobody31 wrote: post #30
davidw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite video game is "emacs". If you align all the characters correctly, you can make the computer do some pretty incredible things. The RMS level is a bitch though. Edit: I'm not joking about Emacs - sitting down to write some code/create something is what I do for fun.

I fed a game of Dwarf Fortress into Perl and my computer became self aware

And about fifteen minutes later when the catsplosion hit, really, really slow, right? :)

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#47

Post by Too »

Can this even be legal? I see this is getting more and more common. Something has to be done about it now before every program you install starts calling home with info about your personal files.

Spotify does the same thing. Read the user agreement, in there somewhere theres a line about giving them full right to analyze and track your personal music collection that you have stored locally on your computer. Yes, that means your local mp3-files completely unrelated to the spotify service.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#48

Post by Silhouette »

Too wrote: post #47

Can this even be legal? I see this is getting more and more common. Something has to be done about it now before every program you install starts calling home with info about your personal files. Spotify does the same thing. Read the user agreement, in there somewhere theres a line about giving them full right to analyze and track your personal music collection that you have stored locally on your computer. Yes, that…

There are all kinds of ways this could potentially be invalidated in law, depending on your jurisdiction: privacy laws, computer misuse laws, unfair contract terms protections/limitations on what would be considered reasonable in a contract of adhesion, and indeed the fundamental question of what legal status any given EULA has and whether it is enforceable at all.

Unfortunately, governments seem unwilling to legislate to provide any clarity on EULAs despite their vast scope. Until they do, what we have is a mixed bag of case law, which has little consistency between jurisdictions or even sometimes within the same jurisdiction, and which in any case covers only a tiny number of very specific cases rather than giving much guidance on the broader principles.

I suspect that means if this is going to be struck down, it's going to be in places that have worthwhile privacy laws, which sadly are few and far between in the world today since technology seems to be running at least a decade ahead of the law's ability to deal with its implications, particularly with regard to form contracts and privacy where the increasing dependence on conducting business via automated on-line systems has profound implications.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#49

Post by anigbrowl »

click170 wrote: post #44
ryanhuff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you throw lawyers under the bus while you are at it. After all, we know that everybody but coders are looking to screw the customer.

No no, I think you misunderstand my point. It's the suits job , nay legal obligation in the case of a publicly held company, to maximize profits. More and more frequently we're seeing profits take precedence over privacy and customers, and I don't think that would have been possible as a bottom-up change coming from coders. No, this change came from the top, and coming from the top it spread to the tops of other comp…

It's the suits job, nay legal obligation in the case of a publicly held company, to maximize profits.

No, it's the suit's job to run the company in the interest of the shareholders. That is not the same thing as 'maximize profits at all costs' (such as, at the cost of future litigation that will exceed the instant profit). This idea that if an opportunity for profit exists, the management is legally obliged to seize it is widespread, but without foundation. Otherwise shareholders would sue large firms for not entering hot new markets where the firms' resources would provide a short-term advantage.

Show me one lawyer who has no qualms about arguing that a corporation is a person, and I'll show you a person who's sold their soul.

Yeah, whatever. without the doctrine of corporate personhood, which lawyers are well aware is a different thing from natural personhood, you wouldn't be able to sue a corporation for malfeasance in the first place, but would have to try suing the officers of the corporation individually while they gave your legal claim the runaround.

Re: EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset

#50

Post by timdorr »

dan00 wrote: post #42
Luyt wrote: post #5

This is why I install my games on a separate bootable harddisk, which I only boot when I want to play a game.

Isn't the other harddisk still visible and searchable?

If a piece of software is looking for other mountable partitions, mounting them, and reading data off of them, I would think that would be looked at as incredibly suspicious.
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