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[Sergius]

Copyright is a form of protectionism, specifically a sanctioned monopoly, and as such, prone to all the flaws of those.

If it protected it from and only from people selling someone's unmodified work. I would be fine with it.

The problem is that there's a fine line between selling and distributing for free. You get such frivolous notions such as "you're making money from piracy cus the torrent site you're using has ads!" (these lawsuits actually exist and while they may not gain much traction in court, they generally are too costly to fight, like all other lawsuits).

Always keep in mind this: ANY lawsuit is always in favour of the one who can actually pay the court costs. It only matters who's right if both sides can afford big time and money loses while the thing is being settled. It's easy to go bankrupt because you got falsely accused of something and sued into hell.

But even if someone takes your work and sells it unmodified, and however unwanted or undesired it is, and the gut feeling is "they're ripping me off", they're actually driving sales to you. One thing to consider, is that we have this mentality that everything's a zero sum game (if someone's making money from MY work, I must be getting ripped off!). That doesn't extend only to piracy. Think of how them Radio Stealers are destroying the plastic music disc selling industry now... remember how it used to be free promotion (in fact, studios illegaly bribe radios off to pretend they liked their music more and played it more often)? Now the big studios want Radio to pay THEM for the priviledge of playing their music, and they want anyone with a radio played in a public space like an office, to pay "performance fees" because other people are listening! What's next? A tax on having ears?

[Frumple]

Buying a Mac version of a product when you have a Windows operating system would not be a failure of the product, but purchasing a copy where the CDs are scratched and inoperable where you would otherwise be able to play would be.

Obviously, and with exception of places that are very clearly no-refund and/or second-hand (Pawnshops, etc.) they would be legally required to either refund or replace the material. Customer-side error, however, doesn't seem to be something so enforced; it's why some (Not I, in any way, shape, or form) would say that torrenting a copy to replace a lost disc or whatever isn't kosher.

What we-the-customer are owed past the immediate sale is kinda' what's being questioned here, right?

How is this different from purchasing a game where you meet all the requirements to operate the software but the delivery service for that software is inoperable?

Nature of the delivery service, I'd imagine. From what I understand, optical media is somewhat more standardized than current and upcoming digtal forms of distribution. Hiccups on the way to progress, maybe.

Thinking, I believe the parallel would be buying a CD without having a functioning CD-interpreting device.

[Soulwynd]

Hey kids, don't copy that floppy!

The fact some jerkoffs feel the need to make a clip like that tells us there's something very wrong with the notion of it being wrong in the first place.

Also...

No cash, no inspiration
What a douche.


And you wouldn't steal a baby.

[Vel]

'Nature of the delivery service, I'd imagine. From what I understand, optical media is somewhat more standardized than current and upcoming digtal forms of distribution. Hiccups on the way to progress, maybe.'

(Sorry, I am terrible at figuring out how to cut down quotes to a more manageable size)

I agree that it's a question of how to handle the laws that applied to old distribution methods to new technology. But it is my opinion that consumer rights laws will apply to digital distribution sooner or later, when the issue comes up in courts. It just hasn't yet is all, perhaps because people who spend their time gaming probably aren't terribly rich and thus litigious.

Edit - Which is to say, Steam (and as far as I know, most digital services) currently have an absolute no refund policy even if they fail to deliver the product to you in any way. I seriously doubt this will hold up in a serious court case if and when it is brought up -- they are essentially, right now, selling you the temporary right to use the products at their leisure rather than even selling you a license to use the product.

[Rilder]

Also...

No cash, no inspiration
What a douche.

Well of course you need cash for inspiration, drugs aren't cheap you know, Dionysus forbid they try and do music sober.

[Frumple]

Pfaugh, drugs. The truly inspired get their hallucinations through week long fasts and sleep deprivation, not plant induced altered-perception states. Drugs are for the weak.

It doesn't cost anything to not eat for a week. In fact, you'd probably be saving money and getting inspiration! Win-win.

[Vel]

It doesn't cost anything to not eat for a week. In fact, you'd probably be saving money and getting inspiration! Win-win.

Not to mention losing weight.


Fatty.

[Farseer]

No cash, no inspiration
What a douche.

I think he's taking the piss. The sad thing is that it's impossible to tell because people (LOL METALLICA) have done this seriously in the past.

Hey kids, don't copy that floppy!

THE COMPUTER AGE HASN'T GONE DARK YET

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.

Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Guess who that was written by. :p

[Soulwynd]

Well, the computer nazi king, Bill himself. Unless there's someone retarded enough to write something like that and then steal mac's ideas.

You see, people only want to protect their asses, fuck everyone else.

Me? I just want anyone's idea to be profitable without worrying about IP, copyright, or whatever crap. If the original creator didn't think of whatever people built upon his work, fuck him, he already sold his base work and never pushed it further. We need to promote evolution and advancement, not dark ages church-style protectionism.

[Sergius]

Bill? The world's first software pirate? The guy who took all the money IBM gave him to make OS2 whose actual code he swapped for some crap while keeping it to make Windows? The guy that made a fortune because everyone pirated his operating system and thus the entire world was locked in his craptastic software? That Bill?

He actually THANKED piracy once for making him so friggin' rich. It's on an interview somewhere.


BTW, this one is cool:

[Tilla]

Just a note, the DMCA now exempts all cracking of software for personal use. It is perfectly legal to crack something you legally purchased. No gray area.

[0x517A5D]

I recall a company that provided a service where they verified you owned a CD (rather, had physical possession of it), and then sold you a high quality MP3 to download.

They got shut down real quick.

I tried to Google up their name and a reference to the court case, but I couldn't find it among all the companies trying to sell sell sell music music music.

Owning one copy of a copyrighted work doesn't give you the right to obtain a second copy.  It's illegal.  The mod is right.

As for cracks... when I was cracking DOS software, I would do it by making a very small executable that loaded the main game executable, then patched it on-the-fly.  That's totally legal to distribute; there was no content in it from the game maker.

But today, all cracks (with a very small margin of error) are modified copies of the game executable.  And that is not legal to distribute.

No, I don't care either.  I buy the software, then download the NoCD.

[Asehujiko]

Since we are doing WWII axis analogies now anyway.

The moral of the story: Paradox moderators are facists, Escapist moderators are Einzatsgruppen. On their forums a post not raging against would have gotten you a week suspension and a permaban for daring to suggest that one of their staff is a mere human.

Contact Valve, their support is generally more helpful then the companies that just shovel their crap onto Steam with the message "85/15, my way" and then refuse to ever touch the product again.

And copyright law basically comes down to: "everybody except the MAFIAA is criminal scum".

[tNok85]

I haven't followed the whole conversation, but basically... this is how I view it from a moral standpoint:

If I've paid for the game, I have bought the license to play it. To me, it doesn't matter HOW I play it or how I acquire it.

Good example: GTA4. I own it on Steam. But the Steam version (1.0.7.0) is not mod-friendly, and I mostly play single player with mods. So I grabbed a couple ISOs off usenet* and used my legit key in game, and kept it at 1.0.4.0. Now I can enjoy all my mods like first person driving, extra weapons, extra cars, modified cars, and not have to deal with them breaking mods every patch. (Other games - Total War series, Fallout series, Oblivion - all owned on Steam but can be a pain to deal with through Steam)

Another example: I have bought Wing Commander: Privateer three times in the past couple decades (and Righteous Fire once). My latest copy is broken. I have the box, but I can't install it. I don't feel guilty *at all* for grabbing it online, tossing it into DOSBox, and heading down nostalgia lane.


I see it more as an ethical/moral issue. I have not cheated anybody out of their hard-earned cash. I've paid to play.



* Usenet negates the whole 'but you're uploading it to others who don't own it so you're breaking the law' deal - usenet is download only, not peer to peer.

[Frumple]

Owning one copy of a copyrighted work doesn't give you the right to obtain a second copy.  It's illegal.  The mod is right.

Excepting the small loophole where making a backup copy (read: Second copy) isn't illegal. Which applies to some subsets of games -- or, at the least, I remember mention at some point in courts ruling in the favor of such things. Mostly applies to emulation, where's it's not legal to distribute ROMs, nor the hardware to run them on the original system, but it is legal to create your own dump of the game and (presumably) construct the hardware to run it. Providing you don't sell or distribute and keep all of it to yourself, or whatever. Of course, torrents would be completely outside of that -- those are pretty much always illegal when not being distributed by whoever owns the material's rights.

In the OP's case, though, th'critter wasn't looking to get a second (or backup) copy, just get one that functioned at all. Probably doesn't equate to the same scenario.