Store Wars: WinRAR strikes back - WinRAR files DMCA claim against pirates

[rcmaehl]

Source:
Github
Torrentfreak

 

Summary:

WinRAR has issued a DMCA claim against a WinRAR keygen hosted on github, questioning why someone would keygen an indefinite trial.
 

Media:

 

Quotes/Excerpts:
 

Quote

WinRAR is the third most installed software in the world behind Chrome and Acrobat Reader. The reason for that, at least in part, is the company’s liberal business model. Users get a 40-day period to trial the tool and then, if they like it, they can part with cash in order to obtain a license. However, WinRAR never times out and relies completely on users’ inclination to pay for something that doesn’t need to be paid for to retain functionality. Those who do pay for a license get rid of a ‘nag’ screen and gain a couple of features that most people don’t need. There are people out there who would still rather not pay a penny to use a piece of software that is essentially free to use. So, in order to obtain a ‘license’ and get rid of the nag screen, they use a piece of software called a ‘keygen’. The company behind WinRAR doesn’t seem to care too much about casual piracy but it is bothered about keygens. “It violates our technological measures by the repo holding the source code and the compiled application to a custom-created keygen which is built to bypass our licensing generation system and allows end users to create their own unique .key files for no charge which therefore bypasses our technological measures.” The format of the DMCA notice is part of a growing trend. It doesn’t claim that the keygen copies WinRAR’s code but instead states that it violates the company’s rights by breaching the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. As such, the notice cannot be easily countered. “This GitHub repository violates a section of 17 U.S.C. § 1201 which is a part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” the notice adds. “Since 17 U.S.C. § 1201 doesn’t have a counter-notification process if GitHub does not provide one then appealing of this notice is improbable. GitHub is legally not required to provide an appeals system for anti-circumvention cases.” Github didn’t waste any time taking the repository down. WinRAR’s marketing team couldn’t immediately elaborate on the specifics of the DMCA notice but noted that people shouldn’t really have a need to pirate its product.  “Indeed this is an interesting case, as we also don’t see the necessity of using a pirated version of WinRAR instead of our trial version. We know that our licensing policy for end customers is not as strict as with other software publishers, but for us it is still important that WinRAR is being used, even if the trial period might be over,” The company also highlighted the existence of cartoons and memes on the Internet which relate to WinRAR’s indefinite trial, noting that “we like all of them and it meets our sense of humor.” Perhaps more importantly, however, the company understands the importance of maintaining the positive image it’s earned by not persecuting users who use the product beyond its trial period. Going after them isn’t on the agenda but they would prefer people not to go down the piracy route.

 

My Thoughts:

Excuse me but.... WinRAR Keygen? Why? Even as a proof of concept, I would report the issue to WinRAR to patch first before releasing it. Regardless, it's interesting to see more and more companies using 17 U.S.C. § 1201 as the method of filing DMCA notices as there is basically no counter notification process for that specific part of the DMCA.

[porina]

I didn't even know WinRAR was still current. Within my visibility, I think I only ever saw it widely used in the early days of the internet when general piracy was higher, and then mostly for sharing of said pirated content. Legit users mostly used pkzip or lha. I just use 7zip now which is completely free.

[Bombastinator]

People hated the dmca when it came out.  Predicted all kinds of problems.

[Radium_Angel]

18 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

why someone would keygen an indefinite trial.

Because there are people who still want something for nothing (or just to "get one over on da Man bro!")

[Yogi_DaBear221]

I feel like this is just pirates taking the piss lol

[Animal901]

7zip!!!!!

[Vishera]

34 minutes ago, porina said:

I didn't even know WinRAR was still current. Within my visibility, I think I only ever saw it widely used in the early days of the internet when general piracy was higher, and then mostly for sharing of said pirated content. Legit users mostly used pkzip or lha. I just use 7zip now which is completely free.

I have always used WinRAR,still using it,

It's pretty convenient for compressing and decompressing data.

[xAcid9]

I don't know why average consumer willing to pirate Winrar when 7zip is truly free and just as good for their daily usage.

I switched to 7zip over 15 years ago and never look back. 

[WereCat]

53 minutes ago, porina said:

I didn't even know WinRAR was still current. Within my visibility, I think I only ever saw it widely used in the early days of the internet when general piracy was higher, and then mostly for sharing of said pirated content. Legit users mostly used pkzip or lha. I just use 7zip now which is completely free.

I encountered several .zip files that refused to be unpacked with 7zip so I was forced to install WinRAR.

Otherwise I would be using 7zip exclusively. 

 

for example 

https://github.com/moisespr123/SVT-AV1-GUI/releases

[paddy-stone]

There are some winrar made archives that only winrar itself AFAIK can unzip... I have encountered some myself, whilst I usually use 7zip/peazip. It's quite annoying when someone sends you one of those archives, as I usually have my file manager auto extract archives to save some time and effort.

[Zodiark1593]

2 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

I don't know why average consumer willing to pirate Winrar when 7zip is truly free and just as good for their daily usage.

I switched to 7zip over 15 years ago and never look back. 

7-zip isn't available for Android, though WinRar actually is. Though it's entirely moot as WinRar Android can open .7z files, and 7-Zip can open up .Rar files. Lots of cross compatibility there.

 

[Princess Luna]

3 hours ago, porina said:

I didn't even know WinRAR was still current. Within my visibility, I think I only ever saw it widely used in the early days of the internet when general piracy was higher, and then mostly for sharing of said pirated content. Legit users mostly used pkzip or lha. I just use 7zip now which is completely free.

I have always used WinRAR and will continue to always use it since it does a great job with compression.

 

It's far more used than it seems.

[GoodBytes]

I just use built-in Windows zip support to compress and decompress files. Plenty good.

[Lurick]

3 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I just use built-in Windows zip support to compress and decompress files. Plenty good.

Or 7-zip which is actually free

[minibois]

4 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Summary:

WinRAR has issued a DMCA claim against a WinRAR keygen hosted on github, questioning why someone would keygen an indefinite trial.

Isn't it the case that companies still have to pay for WinRAR? Especially when opening .rar files?

[RejZoR]

3 hours ago, WereCat said:

I encountered several .zip files that refused to be unpacked with 7zip so I was forced to install WinRAR.

Otherwise I would be using 7zip exclusively. 

 

for example 

https://github.com/moisespr123/SVT-AV1-GUI/releases

Must be non standard ZIP archives. Some time ago ZIP archives with Deflate64 were problematic because it was assumed ZIP can only ocntain regular Deflate compression.

9 minutes ago, minibois said:

Isn't it the case that companies still have to pay for WinRAR? Especially when opening .rar files?

The infinite trial is weird by itself in case of WinRAR, but they might not care for home users. They might have a problem with commercial use. A lot of free apps allow free use for private use, but are not allowed to be used for any kind of commerical use.

2 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

There are some winrar made archives that only winrar itself AFAIK can unzip... I have encountered some myself, whilst I usually use 7zip/peazip. It's quite annoying when someone sends you one of those archives, as I usually have my file manager auto extract archives to save some time and effort.

Those were RAR5 archives, the new RAR format introduced few years ago. Reason 7zip didn't support it at first was the RAR SDK implementation that was difficult to integrate into 7zip. But I think it was done some time ago and 7zip should open RAR5 archive sjust fine.

17 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I just use built-in Windows zip support to compress and decompress files. Plenty good.

ZIP is so 90's compression algorithm. 7zip has superior LZMA2. Not only it has no 4GB limit or limited by number of files in it, it's also much much faster as it can use a many cores as you give it and compression wise, it's only surpassed by ZPAQ in terms of compression ratio, but it takes like 50x longer to compress and only gain maybe 1%. LZMA2 is probably the most advanced and fastest compression at the moment. And since 7z is free as archiver and as archive format, everyone support it. In the beginning there used to be issue where sending 7z to someone meant they probably couldn't open it. These days I can send it with confidence that anyone can open it. People who would only have ZIP support via Windows almost don't exist.

[paddy-stone]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Those were RAR5 archives, the new RAR format introduced few years ago. Reason 7zip didn't support it at first was the RAR SDK implementation that was difficult to integrate into 7zip. But I think it was done some time ago and 7zip should open RAR5 archive sjust fine.

Now that you mention it, I checked my package manager extract settings, and it's still using ver 4.65, so that might be why it's still not extracting them then. I assumed it was using the latest version, so didn't actually try the archives with 7zip stand-alone prog, and instead just used winrar to extract them. I'll know next time not to trust that the package manager is using the latest version 

[Jito463]

What's even more ironic about this, is that once you buy a license (which isn't even that expensive), it's yours for life.  You never have to buy an upgrade, just download the current version and install it.  I bought mine years ago and I'm running the current version without issue.

[GoodBytes]

4 hours ago, RejZoR said:

ZIP is so 90's compression algorithm. 7zip has superior LZMA2. Not only it has no 4GB limit or limited by number of files in it, it's also much much faster as it can use a many cores as you give it and compression wise, it's only surpassed by ZPAQ in terms of compression ratio, but it takes like 50x longer to compress and only gain maybe 1%. LZMA2 is probably the most advanced and fastest compression at the moment. And since 7z is free as archiver and as archive format, everyone support it. In the beginning there used to be issue where sending 7z to someone meant they probably couldn't open it. These days I can send it with confidence that anyone can open it. People who would only have ZIP support via Windows almost don't exist.

Not that I don't agree with you, but who cares? I mean, the days of 56K internet or 1Mbps is long gone for the majority of people in dev country. 

Performance is fine even with a first gen Core 2 Duo for you everyday typical file compression. And the reality of things, is that most people these days only uses zip files to regroup files together, as tar never picked up in the Windows world. How often does anyone have 4GB+ files that need to be compressed? Compressing a 4.5GB file to shrink it to (even with 7zip) down to 4.3GB isn't going to make much of a difference in internet transfer time or network transfer speed. You'll spend more time compressing the file, than to spend the extra time to transfer, most likely.

 

As for multi-core compression, that is up to the software. For ages PowerArchiver delivered this, as an example. Remember that doesn't mean WInZip didn't put much care on this, that it is a limitation of zip file.

[Zodiark1593]

3 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Not that I don't agree with you, but who cares? I mean, the days of 56K internet or 1Mbps is long gone for the majority of people in dev country. 

Performance is fine even with a first gen Core 2 Duo for you everyday typical file compression. And the reality of things, is that most people these days only uses zip files to regroup files together, as tar never picked up in the Windows world. How often does anyone have 4GB+ files that need to be compressed? Compressing a 4.5GB file to shrink it to (even with 7zip) down to 4.3GB isn't going to make much of a difference in internet transfer time or network transfer speed. You'll spend more time compressing the file, than to spend the extra time to transfer, most likely.

 

As for multi-core compression, that is up to the software. For ages PowerArchiver delivered this, as an example. Remember that doesn't mean WInZip didn't put much care on this, that it is a limitation of zip file.

Not to mention that many files (a consumer would use) worth compressing nowadays, are already compressed, and wouldn't gain much of anything at all from additional lossless compression. My primary uses for 7-zip/WinRar is to take a bunch of different files and stick it into one single blob, and to be able to encrypt said blob.

 

Though from a distribution side, not only is the consolidation of files drastically simpler from both a management standpoint, and for the platter drives the files are stored on, but bandwidth costs money for businesses. When thousands of people are downloading the same compressed blob, the one time compression becomes comparatively inexpensive, even for just a few % of size saved.

[Arika]

TIL you can buy WinRAR

[Kilrah]

19 hours ago, WereCat said:

I encountered several .zip files that refused to be unpacked with 7zip so I was forced to install WinRAR.

Otherwise I would be using 7zip exclusively. 

 

for example 

https://github.com/moisespr123/SVT-AV1-GUI/releases

Works great with 7zip here... and if it didn't Windows' built in handling would likely work anyway.

[LAwLz]

11 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Not that I don't agree with you, but who cares? I mean, the days of 56K internet or 1Mbps is long gone for the majority of people in dev country. 

Performance is fine even with a first gen Core 2 Duo for you everyday typical file compression. And the reality of things, is that most people these days only uses zip files to regroup files together, as tar never picked up in the Windows world. How often does anyone have 4GB+ files that need to be compressed? Compressing a 4.5GB file to shrink it to (even with 7zip) down to 4.3GB isn't going to make much of a difference in internet transfer time or network transfer speed. You'll spend more time compressing the file, than to spend the extra time to transfer, most likely.

 

As for multi-core compression, that is up to the software. For ages PowerArchiver delivered this, as an example. Remember that doesn't mean WInZip didn't put much care on this, that it is a limitation of zip file.

I don't think "it's good enough" is a valid excuse when the free (as in freedom and free beer) alternative offers greater performance, better compatibility and more features. 

But I guess it depends on how often you use it. I use archives all the time so to me it matters a lot. 

If you barely use them at all I guess the install time, possibility security risks and space used isn't worth it. 

 

Personally I think it would be great if Microsoft integrated 7zip into Windows. 

[vanished]

7 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Personally I think it would be great if Microsoft integrated 7zip into Windows. 

This absolutely.  They already have built in zip support which is great, but it's one of the lesser used formats as far as I can tell.  Rar and 7zip are definitely at the top in my experience, and probably in that order, at least among Windows things.  I know the Linux side uses a ton of tar.gz and so on but that's another story.  I can understand having issues with RAR licensing but that doesn't change the fact it would be nice, and considering they managed it with mp3 and other proprietary formats, I don't see why they couldn't.  The less extra custom software necessary for daily tasks the better imo.  I loved the addition of the built in ISO mounter in Windows 10 even though I don't use it very often.  This could be another one of those.

[WereCat]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Works great with 7zip here... and if it didn't Windows' built in handling would likely work anyway.

well, I just tried and they do work with 7zip now

 

I got loads of errors during extracting before though. Not sure whats up with that.