UnBox Calls Home, A Lot 252
SachiCALaw writes "It turns out that to use UnBox, the user has to download software from Amazon that contains a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe). Tom Merritt over at C|Net reports that the service tries to connect to the internet quite frequently. Even tweaking msconfig could not prevent it." From the article: "So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can't burn to DVD and can't watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again."
What is the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out Unbox's 12 monkeys [amazon.com] and the special edition DVD [amazon.com] with over 2 hours more video.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Personally, I usually shop at Amazon.com for their prices. If it's lower, I buy, if not, I get in my car and drive out to BestBuy, MicroCenter, or if I'm desperate, WalMart. If Amazon raises their prices, I don't buy from them. Simple as that. More likely they'll find that they have to drop prices on their UnBox downloads.
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Buses are closed Sundays and holidays (Score:3)
My computer was a Christmas present several years ago, and I rely on the bus partly because I lack a driver's license.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Citilink buses [fwcitilink.com] are closed Saturday nights, Sundays, and holidays. The 36-hour figure is from 1800 on Sa
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Bike cargo room? (Score:2)
It's not the "to" but the "from". How much can you carry home on a bike? I can stuff a few DVDs in a backpack, but not significantly larger items, such as a DVD player in its packaging.
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So I don't think it's that big a hardship to buy a video from a store, unless it's something obscure that I couldn't find any other way.
iTunes works because you can buy music much more cheaply than if you went to a store. I could buy a single song for $ 0.99 and that's something you just
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if you don't believe me, try not using your car for a week.
* nyc and possibly c
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1/2 a mile (800 yards) to the shop and you need a taxi??
Man I know many of us are lard-assed hackers but this explains why!
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Informative)
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Same goes for Music video DVDs vs audio CDs.
Video DVDs have multiple audio tracks (aka, more production work to make them). Video (again, more work). And frequently, if not almost always, have more minutes of material than audio CDs, yet audio CDs often cost more than the video counterpart. And not just a couple of cents like the 12 monkeys example.
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Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
wine (Score:2)
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*rimshot*
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UnBox Video Player License (Score:5, Informative)
In order to download and view Digital Content using the Service, you will need to install the Unbox Video Player (the "Software") on an Authorized Device and agree to the Microsoft Software Supplemental License Terms set forth as an Addendum below these Terms of Use (the "Software License"). The Software may operate on your Authorized Device continuously for a variety of reasons, including the management of your Digital Content. The Software also will access the Internet in order to perform a number of functions including as described below:
a. Software Upgrades. The Software automatically checks for upgrades, but the Software will not automatically upgrade without your consent, except as provided herein. If you do not consent to an upgrade that we make subject to your consent, the Digital Content may no longer be viewed on your Authorized Device. You must keep the Software on your Authorized Device current in order to continue to use the Service. We may automatically upgrade the Software when we believe such upgrade is appropriate to comply with law, enforce this Agreement, or protect the rights, safety or property of Amazon, our content providers, users, or others.
b. Information Provided. Amazon respects your privacy, and the Software will not access computer files or other information on your computer that are not used by or otherwise related to the Service. Among other things, the Software will provide Amazon with information related to the Digital Content on your Authorized Device and your use of it and information regarding your Authorized Device and its interaction with the Service. This information will enable Amazon to manage rights associated with the Digital Content, allow Amazon to help you use the Service more effectively and otherwise help Amazon to enhance and improve the Service. For example, the Software may provide Amazon with information about the Digital Content from the Service on your Authorized Device, whether it has been deleted and whether it has been viewed. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about your Authorized Device's operating system, software, amount of available disk space and Internet connectivity, such as whether your computer or other device is available online. This information will, among other things, help us deliver Digital Content to you more efficiently and effectively. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about the transfer of Digital Content to portable devices to help us ensure compliance with our rules concerning portable devices.
c. Removal of Software. If you uninstall or otherwise remove the Software, your ability to view all Digital Content you have downloaded to the Authorized Device will immediately and automatically terminate and we reserve the right to delete all Digital Content from that Authorized Device without notice to you.
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This service will die within 3 months.
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The Services are available only to customers located in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, you may not use the Services and you may not transfer Digital Content outside the United States. As used herein, "United States" refers to the 48 contiguous United States, the District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii.
So now if I download a movie and bring my laptop on a trip out of the country, then I'm breaking the terms of service. That's pretty draconian.
If you v
Re:UnBox Video Player License (Score:5, Insightful)
Why fear the MPAA when merely exercising your rights?
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Uhm... that would actually end up being public performance*, and the movies are specifically licensed for private personal viewing.
* (Lawyers: I know it wouldn't be. It was a joke.)
Should Congressional Action Be Warranted? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of the software is so sneaky as to masquerade as a legitimate SSL requirest, so even a network administrator has no clue whether or not the information coming out of their network does or does not contain proprietary information about the network's users--and you are left to the "trust us" language in the EULAs with no proof that the data being sent is benign info.
Where is the EFF on this???
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Oh, wait. Personal responsibility is dead. Continue whining about how you hate something but Special-Interest-Group-X won't do anything about it.
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It comes down to this: Whining to the EFF about entertainment companies is stupid. There is no "right" to entertainment. Nothing forces you to buy, steal, or listen to/watch music or movies. If you don't like the way the companies are run, don't buy their products. You don't have to go whining demanding congressional action
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That's a statement I am so fucking sick of reading on this site. It would be applicable if the entertainment companies weren't pretty much the only game in town. But 99% of everything to do with media entertainment available is from them, so you have no damn choice but to deal with them. This "well you don't have to buy their products" line is bullshit, and over-used, dead tired bullshit at that.
Re:Should Congressional Action Be Warranted? (Score:4, Interesting)
You absolutely have a choice, you have the option of not consuming mainstream media. It may not be a choice that you like, but it's a choice nonetheless. Just because you don't want to do something doesn't mean the option isn't available to you.
It's obviously not a simple choice, to be sure. It's a tradeoff between two different interests, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Most people do decide to purchase mainstream media, they value access to that content over whatever money or rights they have to give up to get it, and they have the option to do so. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the fact that lots of people make a particular choice means it's the only choice anyone could possibly make, though.
Re:Should Congressional Action Be Warranted? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no problems with people who choose to partake in these forms of entertainment, however, I do have a problem with people who whine constantly about having no choice in the matter. Especially those who advocate that the government or groups like the EFF should step in and force the media companies to deliver the content in a manner that they personally prefer.
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That statement really is not the issue. IF people/companies/whomever decides to provide entertainment, they do so under some very specific conditions, namely, the ones laid out in copyright law.
Copyright law was created NOT to benefit content creators (artists, musicians, etc.) but to benefit society as a whole - copyright is merely a ploy to encourage creation by allowing the creators to benefit from their work for a limited time and only applies to the right to repr
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If only more people supported the EFF. United We Stand, Divide We Fall (as applicable to political movements as to revolutions).
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If you don't like the way some software works, fine, don't use it. NOTHING forc
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NO Congressional Action! (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't need Congress to persuade you to not choose to run spyware. A little self-discipline will be quite enough.
Say all you want about the inevitability of DRM and the media companies' requirements for it, but one thing is for sure: DRM-compliant software is always (there has never been an exception) intended to serve someone other than the user. You can candycoat this ugly fact all you want, but if you choose to run a proprietary player because you want to watch some DRM content, you accept that you
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And if the "spyware" is DRM for media distribution, likely to be about half as effective in the real world.
Nope, capitalism can take care of this (Score:3, Insightful)
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You'll care when they decide for no discernible reason that you've violated the license and delete everything you've fairly purchased.
Like, say, uninstalling the player. You paid for the damn movies, why should you not be able to watch them once you delete the player?
That's like saying that if you return your DVD player you should burn all your DVDs.
This is not the first time I've seen this (Score:3, Interesting)
is this a competative action?: (Score:2)
Is this a clue how MS intends to compete with Google Office?
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Well what did you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've outlined my opinions here [lfnet.net] (warning: web site plug).
But it's pretty simple. Costs too much, doesn't provide value, intentionally confuses customers, and doesn't support the right hardware.
If this software has blatant spyware in it, I wouldn't be surprised a bit.
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The same old bad deal. Non free sucks. (Score:2, Interesting)
Amazon is clearly catering to a single party -- motion picture copyright holders.
It's intersting that someone with the nick name, "gnu-sucks" would complain about non free software problems. Yes, the "single party" in this case is the MPA. In other cases it's M$ or the highest bidder. That's the way non most non free software works. It's non free because the author wants you to do as they say in one way or another. As lots of companies, such as IBM, have been making lots of money selling and servici
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My slashdot username is simply to point out that there are other OSS licenses. I dig gnu, but it has its share of shortcomings.
Also, IBM doesn't make money selling free software. They make money installing it, and coming up with creative solutions. Not to mention support. By proxy, free software has made them some money for sure. But not the sale directly.
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That's the way non most non free software works. It's non free because the author wants you to do as they say in one way or another
If you consider gnu gpl software to be 'free software', by your reasoning, than you're seriously mistaken. GPL licensed works have very specific license requirements. If I'm to distribute my GPL'd app, you better believe it absolutely has to include the source code. And, if anyone wants to use it for their own purposes, t
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If I'm to distribute my GPL'd app, you better believe it absolutely has to include the source code. And, if anyone wants to use it for their own purposes, their works have to be covered by the same license. And I have to include an obvious copy of the GPL license.
Yes, if you distribute someone else's software you have to pass on the same rights you received. That has nothing to do with your own software, for which you can use whatever license you please. If you want to distribute modified GPL'd softwar
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An hour later:
I'd hate for some dork like Bill Gates to use my software to make money and prop up his little Windoze empire.
So, you, the author, want people with your code to do as you say in one way or another?
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Uhh... ever install anything that's GPL or similar? You almost always have to click "I Agree" to something. As for not helping your neighbor, how about considering that, from a purely commercial point of view, if a company is considering using your source code, it might help them not to reveal that they do, much less their contributions to the code. And if you consider the pla
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No it doesn't. It makes their implementation of that code non-free. The code is as free as it ever was.
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Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
</sarcasm>
Seriously, there is no way any movie studio in the current climate would even consider licensing material for Amazon to run a service like this without some fairly draconian restrictions like "must do everything in its power to prevent piracy; if that means phoning home every 20 minutes so be it".
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Windows Service? (Score:2)
Hmm...
Either he didn't untick the appropriate box in the "Services" tab of msconfig (not recommended as a solution) or he didn't go into the control panel (or run services.msc) and change the 'Startup Type' from "Automatic" to "Manual"
My guess is he unticked a box in the "Startup" tab of msconfig and expected that to solve the problem. Unless of course, the Amazon program didn't really instal
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He didn't really elaborate, so it's hard to say.
He tells you what he did. (Score:5, Informative)
From the Fine Article:
I noticed that the Amazon player had launched itself. Annoying. I looked in the program for a preference to stop it from launching itself, and there was none. Typical. So I went to msconfig and unchecked Amazon Unbox so that it would definitely not launch itself at start-up. When I rebooted, it was no longer there. However, my firewall warned me that a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe) was trying to connect to the Net. I clicked More Info in the firewall alert and found it was Amazon Unbox.
As a Debian user, all of the above is so much meaningless mumbo jumbo to me, but the details are unimportant. It did not do what he wanted it to do despite great effort. He finally figured out that it would pretend to uninstall itself if he allowed the still loaded client unrestricted access to the internet. Without a system audit from an independent operating system, there's no telling if it finally did what he wanted but ultimately the service failed him: this is not a good way to watch movies.
It's crap like that that keeps me away from non free software and non free media. I'm not going to give up control of the machine that gives me my mail and news just to hear a song or watch a movie. It's bad enough that the greed heads force me to watch adverts on rented movies when I play them through a set top box, bad enough for me to one day build a mythTV box [slashdot.org]. But install spyware on my normal computer or gateway? You have to be kidding.
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As a windows user, I find much of the commentary on /. about *nix to be meaningless mumbo jumbo... but that doesn't change the fact that my (or your) imitations have no relevance at all to the discussion at hand.
My point was that the author of TFA knew enough to try and use msconfig, but not enough to see if there was an Amazon service runni
Unbox playback problems (Score:3, Informative)
The Unbox player may not be necessary to play back videos purchased through Amazon. It might just be a "wrapper" around WMP. I was able to play back the episode directly through Windows Media Player, and it stops at the 4:12 mark as well, but with an error message: "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file." Which is kind of an odd error to get in the middle of playback.
At least I didn't pay for it.
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SPYWARE / ADWARE IS GOOD (Score:2, Interesting)
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I don't know what kind of "public" you live around, but most of the "normal," "non geek" population I know hates that shit. They will put up with CSS on a DVD, because it works transparently and doesn't burden them. However, when it comes to malware or adware - or copy protection that requires jumping through hoops, nobody wants that. You don't have to be "elite" to see that. I think this is more about your superiority complex than
'Terms of use'(less) (Score:2, Interesting)
Never buy digital restricted media, ever!
He's lucky (Score:2)
Though a broken uninstall is a pretty typical 1.0 bug. But not allowing it to be removed from the startup list (the reason I was trying to uninstall in the first place) is unforgivable.
How does iTunes work? (Score:2)
Let's say I hook a computer up to my network, copy some music to it, authorize it, and then remove it from the network so it no longer has access to the Internet. I assume at some point iTunes will want to phone home to double-check that the computer in question is still authorized to play those tracks, or that you haven't reached any burning limits?
My sister had her iMac about a month earli
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you can authorise 5 computers simultaneously. you want to addd a 6th then you need to deauthorise one of them online (I don't think it has to be done from the computer itself but it's easier that way).
so once it's authorised for an account, a computer is valid for all music bought with that account until you say otherwise. so why bother checking?
burn limits is the only possibilty but I would assume that is done locally in the softw
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Yeah, that's the part I was wondering about. Let's say I go into iTunes and tell it to deauthorize all computers. There has to be some sort of communication between iTunes on the other computers and the iTMS for it to be told that it's been deauthorized. Otherwise, someone could theoretically authorize five
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You answered yourself - it does have to phone home. Or else you could just deactivate computer x from computer y, ad infinitum, and have your music collection available on hundreds of PCs, because iTunes wouldn't phone home to confirm activation status.
Ergo, it phones home.
So what exactly is it doing when it phones home? (Score:2)
If it's sending keylogger logs, credit card numbers and health records it's another.
I'm pretty sure it's not doing any of those things, but is this an argument about substance or principle?
iTunes phones home when I authorize / deauthorize a machine. I don't have reason to suspect Evildoing whrn it does.
Re:So what exactly is it doing? It doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
NO. It is never OK for the software to connect to the internet without informed consent of the OWNER of the computer. That's where security problems start - an app that isn't talking over the internet is very unlikely to get hijacked. An app that is using internet access without the computer owner's knowledge or consent is far,far more likely to be attacked.
Again, NO. It is never OK for someone to use MY computer to analyze the performance of THEIR software, unles
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"an app that isn't talking over the internet is very unlikely to get hijacked."
Vulnerabilities aren't generally found by owners / end users as a result of knowing what apps are using their network connection. They're found by security wonks analyzing behavior and traffic. Are there instances where a legit app was found by an end user to house a vulnerability that did actual damage before being discovered and patched? Certainly not this one - reports have it as a n
Amazon Treachery (Score:2)
Where's the online aggregation of independent booksellers, getting Amazon's economies of scale but retaining their individual connection to the intere
Report this as "Badware" (Score:3, Informative)
That should earn it the Badware Logo. [stopbadware.org]
The great thing about StopBadware is that their guidelines define some actions as making software "badware" despite any disclaimers or EULA terms. "Hard to uninstall" software is always "badware", no matter what the EULA says.
Amazon's motto... (Score:2)
It doesn't matter. (Score:2)
Look at spam. There are so damn many idiots out there that you can make money simply spamming people.
Pathetic.
Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wouldn't mind, b
Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows (Score:4, Funny)
funny that you're complaining about a few kb of memory being used for this, WHILE YOU'RE RUNNING FREAKING WINDOWS.
drop cf. ocean.
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What I didn't see was my firewall having an entry for allowed programs. Maybe it backdoored in with the iTunes.exe or iTunesHelper.exe, but I doubt it. In fact, I looked at the active applications, and while the iPodService.exe was flickering, my firewall reported no traffic. Eve
Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows (Score:5, Informative)
You don't give specifics for any of your other complaints, so I can only assume you're just bitchin' and whinin' about nothin'. Furthermore, you claim your experience with iTunes resembles the Amazon Unbox experience described in the article. So you're saying you weren't able to play a video without messing with the progress bar, iTunes started up automatically, and you had problems uninstalling the application? Or were you just making a meaningless comparison as an excuse to vaguely bitch about iTunes?
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The reason they put "iTunesHelper" in memory at all times is merely to make their program appear to load faster.
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at grandparent/ggp/whatever generation of iTunes hater:
Anyone complaining about that i
Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue isn't that a particular program takes "just a little" memory. It's that every goddamn application vendor takes "just a little memory" and "only one tray icon", etc, etc. It's a tragedy of the commons scenario that files up everyone's machine. Still, if you at least give the user control, that's not so bad. When, like unbox, you don't allow the user to say "no, I don't want you to run every time I boot", it sucks.
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It's probably true that most movie adaptations of books can be proven to be worse than the book, since telling a compelling story in a movie is completely different than telling a compelling story in a book, and very few people, or even teams, can do both well, but offering up that all movies are based on books is a bit too strong for me. Some of my favorite movies are those that weren't books to begin with, like the Matrix trilogy and the Austin Powers t
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For now...
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Did you expected other outcome? When you sign into new service - just to find the same old faces??
Since when we have iTMS? 3? 4 years now? Everybody screamed (and still screams) that service is expensive and restrictive. M$/friends came in. And what? New service - albeit cheaper - is even more restrictive.
People expected competition - especially after so many years. And better service. But thanks to DMCA, RIAA/MPAA got power to manipulate the services and slice markets as they wish - to end result to
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