The DRM that is installed on your computer along with your copy of Spore has come to completely dominate the conversation about the game, and while thousands of one-star reviews on Amazon is bad for PR, a class-action lawsuit could be bad for actual business. One such suit has already been filed by Melissa Tomas, on the grounds that the installation of SecuROM is not disclosed in any of the game's documentation, that the program is "uninstallable," and does all sorts of nasty things to your system.

"Once installed, [SecuROM becomes] a permanent part of the consumer's software portfolio," alleges the complaint (PDF, found via GamePolitics). "Even if the consumer uninstalls Spore, and entirely deletes it from their computer, SecuROM remains a fixture in their computer unless and until the consumer completely wipes their hard drive through reformatting or replacement of the drive."

After searching through Spore's End-User Licensing Agreement, it is clear that while EA is explicit that the game will install DRM measures, the name SecuROM is never made clear. As for the claims about the program being uninstallable short of a complete system wipe, an uninstaller is actually available to remove SecuROM. You can grab it directly from the official web site, in fact.

The rest of the language is vague, making specific claims hard to either back up or refute. The suit says that SecuROM "surreptitiously operated, overseeing function and operation on the computer, preventing the computer from operating under certain circumstances and/or disrupting hardware operations." The suit also quotes from an Amazon review that tells a horror story; "The SecuROM disabled [my fianceé's] firewall, anti-virus, and much of the functionality of Vista. He can no long install any other programs to his computer, or use his task manage because his entire computer freezes up." Another complaint alleged that SecuROM led his computer to tell him he "wasn't authorized."

The suit continues to use accounts from the Amazon carpet-bombing as evidence, although the claimed damages may be hard or impossible to conclusively prove; it's not exactly possible to perform checks on all these thousands of computers to prove that SecuROM did in fact make the system "slow down [the entire] system significantly." The claim that a reformat is the only way to remove the program is repeated again and again.

The frustrating thing is that SecuROM does have some problems, but they're mostly byproducts of its design; the fact that EA doesn't disclose its installation with clear instructions on how to remove it is a very real concern. The program won't allow you to use certain CD virtualization programs at the same time as the protected program, and certain other programs are simply not allowed to be run concurrently with SecuROM. That makes sense in a program that is supposed to fight piracy. But this lawsuit claims that SecuROM does everything short of leaving the refrigerator door open so your milk goes bad, and the factually incorrect and over-the-top complaints may hurt the chances of this case going anywhere. Simply put, the problems people are reporting aren't problems SecuROM have ever had, and this scare-mongering hurts the legitimate complaints about DRM.

There are are very real and very troubling things about the use of SecuROM and the control it has over your computer. The lack of any specific complaints in this lawsuit makes it seem more like a money grab than anything else, and may detract from legitimate attention paid to the problems plaguing DRM in PC gaming.