UnBox Calls Home, A Lot

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?

Half of the Unvideo searches I ran were more expensive than the DVDs.

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?

This raises an interesting question: now that Amazon is in the business of competing with physical DVD purchases, will Amazon prices for DVDs rise until it's cheaper to buy via UnBox?

Re:What is the point?

See, that's not the way it works. There's no competition here; UnBox is for buying everything you want to watch on your Computer Machine. You're going to have to buy yourself the DVD to watch it on the TV machine. And to watch it on the iPod Gadget, you're going to have to buy it again. And circumventing any of these purchases is a crime.

Re:What is the point?

The MPAA lost the case against DVD Jon. I think it's legal to watch DVDs now.

Re:What is the point?

Aw come on - it's only 11c more - that's a mere 1c per monkey and ONE MONKEY FREE!

Re:What is the point?

It's the reason Amazon has so many studios on board, while Apple will (reportedly) only have Disney next Tuesday. Steve Jobs wants to sell for only $9.99 or $12.99, while the studios wanted higher prices (yeah, I want to pay as much as a DVD for an online video version...right). Jobs wouldn't budge, so they went to Amazon. I'm sure the disaster of Amazon's service compared to the inevitable success of Apple's will put the ball in Jobs' court, and the other studios will come around.

wine

Has anyone tried to use Amazon player using wine?

UnBox Video Player License

3. Unbox Video Player

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.

Re:UnBox Video Player License

FWIW, I'd rip a DVD right in front of an MPAA rep. When he threatens to sue, I'd point at the interoperability clause in the DMCA, and point at the fair use clause in Copyright Law, as well as DVD advertisements which state that I OWN the DVD, along with various court precedents pertaining to the first sale doctrine. Providing I am not violating Copyright Law by distributing the content in violation of it, there isn't much they can do. There's not much they can do if I rip all of my DVDs to xvid to keep readily available on my HDD, and nothing they can do about my copying them to my PocketPC for mobile viewing.

Why fear the MPAA when merely exercising your rights?

Should Congressional Action Be Warranted?

I am tired of seeing companies, whether it is open source or not, offering services that bury unforseen privacy violations within them. There are responsible programs like (on Windows) Winamp and Windows Media Player and even (on *IX) pine, which inform you that it is going to be sending usage information back to home base, with an option to decline such activity.

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???

Re:Should Congressional Action Be Warranted?

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.

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?

You and fotbr are exactly right. Unfortunately, most people aren't willing to make any sacrifices whatsoever and instead prefer to whine about it incessantly. I'm so sick of hearing people say that they don't have a choice. I stopped watching TV and mainstream movies completely just over a year ago and there are plenty of alternative forms of entertainment to keep me amused.

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.

This is not the first time I've seen this

Lots of spyware requires a net connection to uninstall. This is just more spyware. It won't be long before Windows itself requires a net connection to run. WGA is mighty close to that. Claria(or whatever they call themselves now) is alive and well. People who buy new machines won't notice and won't care. It's all good news for the phisherman...who will be hanging out at your local landfill where your machine will end up when you get tired of waiting ten minutes for it to finish booting up. For now the best way to protect your system is to use a live CD.

Well what did you expect?

Amazon is clearly catering to a single party -- motion picture copyright holders.

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.

Windows Service?

However, my firewall warned me that a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe) was trying to connect to the Net.

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 install a Service at all...

He tells you what he did.

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.

Unbox playback problems

Well at least the author of the story managed to get the video to play. I downloaded "The Enterprise Incident" and have not successfully been able to playback the episode in its entirety. At the 4:12 mark, the window goes black and the progress bar goes to the beginning. Amazon "support" has not been helpful at all. A Motley fool poster seems to have a simlilar problem [fool.com]. The Progress Bar doesn't work to jump to any point in the video.

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.

Boycott movies, read the book instead.

After all the book is way better than the movie and you can get it from a library you can take it anywhere and you can lend it to people.

SPYWARE / ADWARE IS GOOD

Spyware, adware, DRM tools, exploits, viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, etc.... I LOVE THEM. Why? Because malware continues to keep the masses informed about the dangers of software and that nobody... not even big companies (e.g. Sony, Microsoft) should be trusted to release "good" software let alone "bug free" software. The more people get burned by malware, the more likely they are too research a piece of software before they install it. Keep the malware coming!

'Terms of use'(less)

From Terms of use [amazon.com]:

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.

Never buy digital restricted media, ever!

He's lucky

I tried to uninstall the damn thing repeatedly and it always hung "checking for a valid installation" or somesuch. I eventually had to manually kill all the services, manually delete all the files and manually delete all the Amazon references in the registry.

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 did you think it worked?

When I can buy a movie from one computer and have the download start *on another machine*, it's pretty obvious that the software has to be in contact with their servers. Given the large number of internet users with unroutable IPs, having a service that just listens on a port isn't really feasible either.

Whether you think its a good thing or not, this shouldn't really be a surprise to anybody who thought about the software for more than a minute or two.

How does iTunes work?

This article got me thinking - how does iTunes work with regards to authorizing a computer to play purchased music?

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 earlier than her Internet connection, and she didn't have any problems with iTunes during that time with any purchased music that was copied over (she had previously purchased music from iTMS on my Mac, using her own account).

So what exactly is it doing when it phones home?

If it's sending performamnce stats or checking / updating license status, that's one thing.
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.

Amazon Treachery

I haven't shopped at Amazon since they "unilaterally changed" ("violated") their privacy policy to divulge my personal info they required I store with them. Of course I changed it all before I notified them it was unacceptable, and of course they ignored me (and doubtless thousands of others). Now this bullshit, from the people who patented one-click shopping.

Where's the online aggregation of independent booksellers, getting Amazon's economies of scale but retaining their individual connection to the interests of their customers? Big enough to put Amazon back in the dotcom bust where it should have stayed.

Report this as "Badware"

This should be reported to StopBadware.org [stopbadware.org]. It appears to violate Guideline G ("An application must permit end users to uninstall it (in the customary place the applicable operating system has designated for adding or removing programs, e.g., the Add/Remove Programs control panel in Windows) in a straightforward manner, without undue effort or a high degree of technical skill.") and Guideline E ("Software Which Transmits Data To Unknown Parties").

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...

We are evil, and we charge you a lot!

It doesn't matter.

Sadly, most people (I'll bet upward of 80-90%) won't know, wouldn't understand, or wouldn't care. And so if the service is okay and the price is okay and it's convenient enough, most people will be dumb enough to use it.

Look at spam. There are so damn many idiots out there that you can make money simply spamming people.

Pathetic.

Hey, they can't do that!

Surely some spyware company (or Sony) has a patent on phoning home.

Blasphemy!

this is what happens ...

This is what happens when companies forget who they are and how they became successful.

Amazon succeeded long ago because they were less expensive and more convenient.

Unbox is neither.

I have a question ...

Q: Why do technology companies always overreach and seek to use the Internet to exploit customers using questionable if not outright illegal tactics?

A: For the same reason that dogs lick their balls. Because they can.

Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows

please correct me if I'm wrong but other then the intial authrorization, I think the only phone home that itunes does is to plug things for the mini-store advertisments at the bottom of the page. ANd you can turn that off. I don't think it runs services that phone hope besides the application itself. Perhaps on windows it's different than on macs?

Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows

>Imho there ought to be a config option to allow you to specify that you don't have an iPod and so won't be needing the service

funny that you're complaining about a few kb of memory being used for this, WHILE YOU'RE RUNNING FREAKING WINDOWS.

drop cf. ocean.

Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows

All iTunesHelper.exe does is sit dormant until an iPod is connected, after which it fires up iTunes and syncs tracks. There's no "phone home" activity as described in the grandparent post.

F Unbox?

The article didn't make this service seem very fun.

Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows

iTunesHelper isn't a "useless service." It simply waits for an iPod to be plugged in, after which it starts up iTunes and syncs your tracks. There's no "phone home activity," and you shouldn't be surprised it messes things up when you stop it manually. Are you actually surprised that when you messed with an iTunes background service, it affected the app's functionality?

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?

Re:Sounds like iTunes on Windows

Let me be more clear: Using the correct registry entries, you can make any application run when your particular device is connected, regardless of whether or not it is a "mass storage device". I know this, because I have done this for devices my company makes. It's not a "workaround". It's the Windows mechanism for detecting and dealing with devices. Sitting in memory all the time to do the same thing is the hackish workaround.

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.

Re:Ouch...

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 completely avoid threat of competition.

Re:"This story is currently under construction."

lol, did I just steal your first post?

Re:What does it connect to?

How would you block outgoing traffic on common household routers such as Linksys WRT(forgotthenumber) to this address?

My guess is, if it couldn't get an outgoing connection it would simpy refuse to play the movie (at best), or simply delete everything you bought (at worst) if it decided you had somehow violated the license.

Re:lolamazon

After I installed this crap, it did some funky thing where the Settings box closed shortly after I opened it, preventing me from entering my username and password. That was a sign Amazon didn't want me to use it, so I uninstalled it right off.

Re:Wow, what's next?

[...] which is also probably why so many fortune 500 companies are using it or are moving to active directory or migrating from notes/groupwise to exchange.

Shit: 10,000 flies can't be wrong.