CD key violation?!

[Bluebird]

I just got a CD key violation for a game that I am hosting, telling me that I am using the same key in multiple installations.

I do have 2 installations (home and work), but I never use them at the same time. I did my move from home, and then had to switch 2 other players to AI from work.

I have purchased sufficiently many keys to make all my activities legal. It was just more convenient for me to do a 'tar/untar' from one machine to the other than to go through the install/patch process again. And I obviously forgot to update the 'key' file, but my questions are technical:

- Why is this a CD key violation? What are the precise rules and where are they documented?
- Why didn't it warn me instead of accepting my turns, and then just not executing my moves? This can ruin a whole game. :-(

I hate DRM and technocracy *grr*

[Edi]

Note: All of the following post is with the caveat of AFAIK, meaning this is how I think it works but I could have gotten some things wrong.

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a CD key violation is when more than one turns are submitted from more than one IP address with the same key, which would explain your situation nicely. As long as all installations have different legitimate keys, there should be no problem.

As for why it accepted your turns, the check is performed at the hosting phase, not in turn submission phase. Therefore it cannot warn you.

Especially in situations where it is the same player's various installations done with the method you have used, it is the user's responsibility to see to it his systems are in order. It is not the responsibility of either Illwinter, Shrapnel or the party hosting the game to babysit every participant and clean up after a mess that is not their own making.

As for why DRM is to some extent necessary, this thread is a perfect example. In an ideal world, it wouldn't be, but reality is far from ideal.

[calmon]

I've heard of this before. Another host set one of the player to AI and run in the same issue.

Did you use the master password to set them to AI or a players password?

When using master password thats a really big bug and edi should do it on the bug list.

Setting players to AI via the master password should never trigger a CD key violation!

[Edi]

Also, it would be nice to see issues like this reported in the bug discussion thread and even to get PMs about it so I can report them instead of needing to find out by trawling forum threads.

So, detailed bug description, please.

[Bluebird]

Well - looks like I figured this out the hard way.

BTW, there is absolutely no connection between a legal license and DRM stuff. The DRM stuff, even the fact that there is a license key, is not even mentioned in the license. It also does not say anywhere that when I have two licenses, that I have to use two different license keys on installation.

They are separate topics. DRM restrictions will have no effect in court, except perhaps when they violate "fair use".

So, concerning your point about Illwinter does not need to care: I am having problems with a part of the software that is not properly documented and leads to faulty behaviour. So, asking for documentation and suggesting UI improvements by asking for proper error messages is not absurd.

I can understand and accept that Illwinter introduces DRM stuff (though I do not like it, because it restricts what I can do with the software). But then making it behave somewhat nicer would be great.

[Gandalf Parker]

As I understand it, it goes like this...

The game compares incoming turns from the nations. If it sees the same IP from different machines then it considers it a violation (how is it supposed to know otherwise?)

The problem seems to come up when the host sets multiple AIs, especially if the host also plays a nation in the game. Especially if the host does the ai setting and then plays from a different machine.

It cant be that the master password alone will skip the key check since that would be quickly abused. I can agree that setting a nation AI should probably skip the check if possible.

[Bluebird]

One other detail that would be great is if the binary could abort hosting on a CD key violation, as it does with the wrong client version now.

This would prevent stale turns and give the players the opportunity to clean up the mess. And this should be really easy to implement, as the check is already there and a hosting termination is easy to code (printf("Some text\n"); exit(1).

[Edi]

Bluebird said:
Well - looks like I figured this out the hard way.

BTW, there is absolutely no connection between a legal license and DRM stuff. The DRM stuff, even the fact that there is a license key, is not even mentioned in the license. It also does not say anywhere that when I have two licenses, that I have to use two different license keys on installation.

The license key is not mentioned in the software. However, there is absolutely no requirement to do so. The license states that only one copy may be installed per license and since the installations are not media dependent (i.e. don't need a CD in the drive to play), there MUST be some mechanism of preventing large scale pirating off of one single CD. Hence unique license keys per each license. That concept is rather damned obvious. Much like Microsoft has individual license keys and corporate volume license keys, except Dom3 does not have any VLKs.

The DRM stuff is not referred to in the license, if for no other reason than that it was added later in a patch to make the life of people using pirated copies harder.

Bluebird said:
They are separate topics. DRM restrictions will have no effect in court, except perhaps when they violate "fair use".

You're going to have a pretty damned hard time showing how the Dom3 DRM restrictions hamper fair use rights since the license agreement stipulates only one install per game.

Doing a second install on a machine you own and using that for SP only and playing any MP games from a different machine would technically be a license violation anyway, so fair use does not really enter into it.

Bluebird said:
So, concerning your point about Illwinter does not need to care: I am having problems with a part of the software that is not properly documented and leads to faulty behaviour. So, asking for documentation and suggesting UI improvements by asking for proper error messages is not absurd.

A request for documentation is not unreasonable. But see my first paragraphs in this post. Also, I don't know where you come from and how used you are to the extremely litigious culture of the US (and the attendant excruciating license agreements), but most of us from the Nordic countries have little patience for spelling everything out for people to the level of "Placing your hand in the fire will cause burn injuries".

That said, whether or not the documentation and license agreements will be updated is up to Shrapnel and Illwinter. I have nothing to do with that as such.

Bluebird said:
I can understand and accept that Illwinter introduces DRM stuff (though I do not like it, because it restricts what I can do with the software). But then making it behave somewhat nicer would be great.

That can probably be said of nearly any software you care to name.

[Reverend Zombie]

Edi said:
Doing a second install on a machine you own and using that for SP only and playing any MP games from a different machine would technically be a license violation anyway, so fair use does not really enter into it.

Since the players are the ones providing the infrastructure for MP games, and since we often use a second install on a machine dedicated for hosting, it would be nice if we received some slack on this issue for that.