As you may remember, there was a lot of grumbling about the DRM included with simulation game Spore. To make the copyright protection a little less inconvenient, EA has released a de-authorization program allowing you to switch what five computers are authorized to run the copy of Spore you purchased.
For those of you unaware, this is how the copy protection works in the first place: you're allowed to install Spore on five different computers for every copy of the game you buy. To play, you have to connect to a special EA server in order to verify that this particular computer has authorization to run the program. If you run the de-authorization tool (now available for download on the official Spore website), you can de-authorize a machine on the Product Authorization server and then use that "slot" for another computer. Comes in handy if you're say, selling one computer and buying a new one.
The website adds that "you can de-authorize at any time, even without uninstalling Spore, and free up that machine authorization. If you re-launch Spore on the same machine, the game will attempt to re-authorize. If you have not reached the machine limitation, the game will authorize and the machine will be re-authorized using up one of the five available machines."
The bulk of you will probably never install the game on more than five computers so this is probably useless information. Still, it shows that EA is at least making steps toward making their copy protection less of an annoyance for customers.
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