You know you screwed up when the ACLU takes issue with your game.
Maxis' and EA's own clusterf*%# that is "SimCity" found itself the subject of the ACLU's latest blog, not for something as trivial as gender equality or racial apartheid in virtual metropolises mind you, but over the same thing everyone else took issue with, always online DRM, which was the basis for the server jam up when the game launched. While things seem to be moving a bit more swiftly since the launch, the ACLU is still stepping up to take their turn at scolding the company.
Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel for the organization, writes "DRM or not, as a First Amendment lawyer for the ACLU, I find the always-on requirement (for any software that otherwise should be able to run locally) troubling for another reason: it leaves behind those without access to the internet and feeds the "digital divide.""
Evidently, its a matter of digital rights: "As the internet evolves, broadband access becomes ever more important for Americans to take full advantage of their First Amendment rights. As the Federal Communications Commission describes it, broadband is a ""transformative infrastructure"" that drives educational achievement, economic mobility and even meaningful political engagement. The continuing divide negatively impacts all of these important social benefits of maturing internet technology."
And here I was thinking that the "always online" requirement was just a simple pain in the ass.
Rottman even compares the DRM practice to Soviet style censorship: "Consider, for instance, something like dissident speech. During the Soviet era, grassroots dissident publications-known as "samizdat"-were made possible precisely because the means of their production was entirely self-contained (often produced using a single typewriter and carbon paper). The same person would create the content, make the copies and handle distribution-and thereby bypass government-controlled printing presses, copiers or typewriters. That model is rendered impossible in an age of remote-computing, where content-production on a local machine is dependent on lots of other machinery."
Granted, Rottman and the ACLU aren't taking direct issue with "SimCity" itself, they merely hope that the launch dilemma will "spur a larger conversation about how to further increase broadband deployment."
"SimCity's" server status, which at this writing shows them all available and working, can been seen here.