Display Eater Eats More Than Just Displays
Well, this is interesting. It turns out that Display Eater, a screen-capture application for Mac OS X will delete your home folder if it thinks you’re running it with a pirated serial number. How’s that for a draconian anti-piracy policy? [Karsten Kusche over at briksoftware] also thinks it’ll generate some of the worst PR possible:
Removing the home folder of some users will probably do way more advertisement. But that kind of advertisement is not good. This blog post is such a kind of negative advertisement. I definitely do not support such software and I suggest you should not use Display Eater. If you need a tool to create screen-casts go for iShowU. It’s just 3$ more expensive than Display Eater but seems to have a much better user experience.
Of course, Display Eater’s developer thinks his approach is perfectly reasonable, and has threatened to take his toys and go home if people don’t stop pirating his application:
I don’t know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.
I can only hope he follows through on his threat. Piracy is a problem, especially for small software developers. However, there are far better ways of dealing with it than destroying someone’s data (and your reputation along with it).
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- Urban Rambling » Blog Archive » Taking Anti-Piracy a Bit Too Far pingbacked Posted February 22, 2007, 11:51 am
- Against the Grain » Blog Archive » A stupid idea vs. piracy pingbacked Posted February 23, 2007, 2:14 am
- [Linked] trackbacked Posted February 23, 2007, 12:24 pm
That’s insane. How can the user protect themselves from a developer who arbitrarily decides to classify their serial as pirated?
Brik? No thank you!
Oops. Replace Brik with Reversecode.
Time for everyone on the planet to ban Reversecode from their computer.
Deleting users’ data is illegal in most countries, you will get your ass sued. Good luck, “Display Eater” author.
Imagine if Microsoft took this approach. They are already everyone’s favorite whipping post, and for good reason, but what good is an application or operating system that contains code that can willfully destroy data at the creator’s whim? Who in their right mind would WANT to purchase such a thing… or anything else from that developer? This guy defines “stoopid”.
The truly evil part of this is if this code could be manipulated in some way, such that a serial number is replaced without a user’s knowledge, thereby wiping out said user’s data, even though he purchased a legal copy? See where this is going? Microsoft is irritating more and more legitimate paying customers by way of their iron-fisted mentality. It will cost them dearly in the end. A decade from now, they will be a shell of their former selves. With any luck, this “developer” will be serving fries far sooner.
This is unacceptable. I’ve written to versiontracker demanding that they remove this malware. Additionally, I believe that versiontracker is a default bookmark in Safari; that perhaps needs to change. Depending on how versiontracker responds, I’ll be writing to Apple as well.
Oh. I thought there was no way a program running on OS X could ever harm your data. At least that’s what those ridiculous Apple commercials seen to suggest…
Gill Bates said:
I don’t think I’d trust him not to poison the fries just in case you decided to steal them.
Anyway, has anyone notified makers of Mac antivirus/antispyware software about this app? They should be adding it to their malware list so it gets detected and (hopefully) removed before it does too much harm. For those 4 or 5 Mac users who use antivirus, anyway. ;P
this is insane. bottom line the developer cant seem to write an encryption scheme good enought so that it cannot be pirated, so he himself “stoops” down to the level of acting like a 3 yr old throwing a tantrum because he cant get some candy. I say “go ahead and stop developing it”, there are other apps like it out there by authors who obviously can write some sort of encryption sheme to at least “slow” some of the expected piracy that goes on. He could even go far as compiling the application with the users personal data inside of it such as the credit card number or e-mail address, then e-mail the compiled application to the user (all encrypted of course, so it cant be changed via a “hex editor”.
http://yamacdev.blogspot.com/2007/02/behind-curtain-with-display-eater.html
I’ve posted the relevant code, decompiled and explained.
foobar said:
An application can do pretty much anything if you give it your root password (which many applications require for installation). This is why you should always know which program is requesting your password and why. If you do not know why an application is requesting your password, do not type it in. This is a security feature of Mac OSX so you can prevent illegitimate apps from installing themselves or erasing data. If, however, a “legitimate” app, like Display Eater, needs your password to install, it is possible for it to use it against it later.