Electronic Theatre has details about plans for copy protection in Football Manager 2009, saying the upcoming Windows and MacOS football (soccer) game will use new technology created by Uniloc. The new scheme will prevent users from being able to play the game before its official release (apparently historically a problem for this series). This new Uniloc DRM will be activation based, so no disc is required to play, and from the description it sounds like they've been listening to complaints about SecuROM and are hoping to avoid similar controversy: "Uniloc’s software works in much the same was as traditional DRM protections, the user is given a number of personal licences tied to their activation key and can use these as required to activate/deactivate their game. SEGA have worked hard with Uniloc to ensure that the user experience is the best it has ever been with copy protection and a huge leap forward is the removal of the ‘disc in the drive’ requirement of previous years. We have listened to customer feedback and have chosen Uniloc as a result. There are no hidden surprises with Uniloc, the protection software is completely removed if you choose to on uninstall and there are no blacklists, or hidden drivers stopping other applications from running." Thanks N4G.