Chilling Effects Dept: Starforce Whistles Up Feds on Blog Site
Following the recent, disturbing trend of threatening law enforcement action to silence online critics, StarForce, Inc. has apparently requested the FBI to investigate Boing Boing, a popular blog for alleged harassment.
Boing Boing's "crime?" It had the temerity to criticize StarForce's copy protection software, which the company licenses to publishers of computer games.
Boing Boing claims the copy protection, used to thwart software pirates, causes instability on installed PC's. The blog site has called for a boycott of games published by companies that use StarForce. Similarities.org has posted a large list of video-games that employ the copy protection scheme. StarForce clients include a number of well-known game publishers, incuding Ubisoft, Strategy First, Namco, and CDV.
StarForce's ham-handed response to the proposed boycott was a letter accusing Boing Boing of violating "approximately 11 international laws", noting that, "I [PR Director Dennis Zhidkov] have also contacted the FBI , because what you are doing is harassment."
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