Author
|
Topic: Ubi DRM: Their Side of the Story (Read 121392 times)
|
Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
|
Got it, it's fine as long as you pay someone money.

|
|
|
|
Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
|
Amusing. So are we disputing the legality of selling our used games to retailers, on Ebay, etc? I'm really trying to see what the hell your angle is here. Beyond paint chips.
Picture does nothing for me. Sorry.
|
-Rasix
|
|
|
Tebonas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6365
|
Are people here really arguing against the right to resell things you bought by equating it to piracy?
Reselling is not the same as pirating. You bought it once, you sold it once. You are transferring ownership of a legally purchased product. After which you yourself don't own this product anymore.
|
|
|
|
UnSub
Contributor
Posts: 8064
|
Okay, lets roleplay it:
a) You are morally against piracy because the artist is not compensated, or the license is not legally transferable. b) You are for resale.
Create a case where b) does not contradict a).
I'm against piracy. I'm for resale. Just not through the main distributor of 'first hand' video game sales as well. That strikes me as a substantial conflict of interest. Again, Borders doesn't have a second-hand book section where you can buy the latest titles at $5 off (well, afaik).
|
|
|
|
tgr
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3366
Just another victim of cyber age discrimination.
|
Except first-sale does not exist everywhere, and the only jurisdiction that matters tends to uphold EULA's.
And what is this "only jurisdictin that matters" that you speak of that is so convenient to your case? Three games for the price of two, and neither the artist(s) nor their agencies assented to the change in price. But hey, as long as you pay someone you're not stealing nor infringing upon an intellectual property, right?
Gotcha. I'm going to jail for selling books and movies to others, then. At least in your twisted world view. I've got a box here for the series "Ultimate Force". A friend bought it, watched it and gave it to me for my birthday, yet if I look at the back of the box it says "Any unauthorized use including but not limited to copying, editing, lending, exchanging, renting, hiring, exhibiting, public performance, radio or television broadcasting or any other diffusion or otherwise dealig with this DVD or any part thereof is strictly prohibited.". I guess I'm a filthy pirate for receiving a used DVD box set, since the artist(s) nor their agencies assented to the change in price (full price to no price). I had a few books which I'd read once, many years ago, and I had no real intention of revisiting them. I didn't have space for them and I had a new book series that I wanted. I had the choice between throwing away some (or all) of them, or giving or selling them to someone else. I chose to sell it to a used book store, and I went and bought the entire wheel of time series (it was 11 books at the time) at full price. I did, however, see another book about photography I think it was, that I bought from the used book store. Lock me up, for I are pirate, o great defender of morality, o great Sheepherder. Edit: Oh, I almost forgot. I got the Xbox360 from work, along with coupons for 3 games. Gamestop (then EB Games) said they would swap games either 1 to 1 or 3 to 1 (depending on which game it was, how old it was etc). I used that to try out games such as GRAW, which sucked ass on the console, and I ended up swapping it and a few other games for Mass Effect 1. No money was exchanged between me and EB Games for Mass Effect. I was having money issues at that time, and I didn't have enough money to buy Mass Effect in addition to the 3 other games which I exchanged for ME1, so it was either swap those games or not buy/play ME1. I guess that also makes me a filthy pirate since I didn't just throw the old games into the garbage. Edit 2: And I once bought Photoshop Elements 6, thought it wasn't good enough for my needs, so I went and bought Adobe Lightroom instead. My mother was complaining that she didn't have anything to organize her photos with, so I gave her my copy of Elements. Damn I'm an evil person.
|
|
« Last Edit: February 25, 2010, 12:19:08 AM by tgr »
|
|
Cyno's lit, bridge is up, but one pilot won't be jumping home.
|
|
|
Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
|
Borders doesn't have a second-hand book section where you can buy the latest titles at $5 off (well, afaik).
Borders doesn't sell used books at all, but most largeish independent bookstores (at least around here) sell both new and used. I've also never seen a college bookstore anywhere that didn't sell used textbooks alongside the new ones.
|
|
|
|
Sheepherder
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5192
|
Amusing. So are we disputing the legality of selling our used games to retailers, on Ebay, etc? I'm really trying to see what the hell your angle is here. Beyond paint chips. The US seems perfectly fine to let the "it's a license, not a good" thing sit, by only ruling against specific clauses in EULA's, or by ruling in certain cases that the EULA does not apply because the defendant is not an end-user (like the case against the guys reselling OEM software). The other angle is that the artist has a right to be paid for their work. There is no legal difference between pirating, and used games sales so long as nobody upsets the established case law or legislation. Thus, making a distinction between downloading a game and walking into a Gamestop and picking it up is simply fooling yourself. None of this applies to you if you can contain your moral outrage over pirates, or if you don't view rental/used games as being morally superior to pirating, or if you ditch the moralistic arguments altogether because almost everything publishers, retailers and their customers do is as shady as fuck. EDIT: Books and DVD's are different by dint of being special. Nobody ever said justice makes sense.
|
|
|
|
Tebonas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6365
|
The artist is paid for his work with the initial sale. Which just is transferred, not duplicated. Your point is either retarded or trolling.
|
|
|
|
Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
|
The artist is paid for his work with the initial sale. Which just is transferred, not duplicated.
What's the difference between transference and duplication as far as the cut the artist gets?
|
|
|
|
Tebonas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6365
|
With duplication you create a version of the product the artist doesn't get money from. Transference allows a new person to use it, but denies the product to the original buyer at the same time.
|
|
|
|
Sheepherder
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5192
|
Which would be an excellent point if I used the money I got from turning in my copy of Halo 3 to buy another copy of Halo 3.
|
|
|
|
tgr
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3366
Just another victim of cyber age discrimination.
|
Amusing. So are we disputing the legality of selling our used games to retailers, on Ebay, etc? I'm really trying to see what the hell your angle is here. Beyond paint chips. The US seems perfectly fine to let the "it's a license, not a good" thing sit, by only ruling against specific clauses in EULA's, or by ruling in certain cases that the EULA does not apply because the defendant is not an end-user (like the case against the guys reselling OEM software). The other angle is that the artist has a right to be paid for their work. There is no legal difference between pirating, and used games sales so long as nobody upsets the established case law or legislation. Thus, making a distinction between downloading a game and walking into a Gamestop and picking it up is simply fooling yourself. None of this applies to you if you can contain your moral outrage over pirates, or if you don't view rental/used games as being morally superior to pirating, or if you ditch the moralistic arguments altogether because almost everything publishers, retailers and their customers do is as shady as fuck. EDIT: Books and DVD's are different by dint of being special. Nobody ever said justice makes sense. DVDs are "not different". The only reason they're not made impossible to give/sell to others is because they haven't thought of going as far as software publishers are currently going in their quest of "protecting their intellectual property". I'm pretty sure that if they could have, they would have required that DVD/video players were permanently connected to the internet, constantly asking if this person is allowed to view this film. But let's see. Copyright has been enforced by viewing the act of making copies of an intellectual work illegal, because it deprives the original creator of his paycheck for his work. This has been working fine for hundreds of years. There's even been provisions to allow for "fair use", by utilizing parts of someone's work to create new work. But now, in 2010, everything that's digital is suddenly "the norm" and "not transferable" or "licensed to the purchaser", and the copyright laws are suddenly "not applicable", and books are the special ones? And why are DVDs special, if they specifically say that "lending/exchanging is prohibited" ON THE DAMN BOX, yet selling or giving the DVD box set is apparently fine? Which would be an excellent point if I used the money I got from turning in my copy of Halo 3 to buy another copy of Halo 3.
Now you're just either being stupid, or trolling. My money's on both.
|
Cyno's lit, bridge is up, but one pilot won't be jumping home.
|
|
|
Azazel
|
The US seems perfectly fine to let the "it's a license, not a good" thing sit, by only ruling against specific clauses in EULA's, or by ruling in certain cases that the EULA does not apply because the defendant is not an end-user (like the case against the guys reselling OEM software). The other angle is that the artist has a right to be paid for their work. There is no legal difference between pirating, and used games sales so long as nobody upsets the established case law or legislation. Thus, making a distinction between downloading a game and walking into a Gamestop and picking it up is simply fooling yourself.
Yet EB continues to live. If it were the same in any sense, legally, to sell preownwed games, don't you think the EBStop pawnshops would have been C&Ded out of that facet of their existence? EDIT: Books and DVD's are different by dint of being special. Nobody ever said justice makes sense.
You're the "special" one here. As they are clearly not different. tgr - I'll go with both as well. Though at this point in the conversation, I'm really mostly participating to entertain myself, I do have a kind-of reply to something Iain brought up. Right but you haven't addressed the point in my original post, if you couldn't pirate ME2 for example for a while after launch might some people who would otherwise pirate it actually buy it? I believe the answer to that is 'yes' which is where the argument that piracy doesn't affect sales falls flat on its face.
Conversely, if publishers strip away all the bullshit layers of DRM a year or so after release (as Ubi did with Bioshock) then I have no problem buying that now-unfucked product.
|
|
|
|
IainC
Developers
Posts: 6538
Wargaming.net
|
And why are DVDs special, if they specifically say that "lending/exchanging is prohibited" ON THE DAMN BOX, yet selling or giving the DVD box set is apparently fine?
The key part you missed out there is 'unauthorised lending, renting etc'. You are allowed to lend your friend a copy of your DvD, and you are allowed to resell the physical media. What you can't do is use your retail copy licenced for home use in a commercial endeavour such as a rental business or a library. It's similar to the prohibitions on showing it in hospitals, oil rigs, prisons, movie theatres etc. That's not home use and is not authorised under the terms of the licence.
|
|
|
|
tgr
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3366
Just another victim of cyber age discrimination.
|
And why are DVDs special, if they specifically say that "lending/exchanging is prohibited" ON THE DAMN BOX, yet selling or giving the DVD box set is apparently fine?
The key part you missed out there is 'unauthorised lending, renting etc'. You are allowed to lend your friend a copy of your DvD, and you are allowed to resell the physical media. What you can't do is use your retail copy licenced for home use in a commercial endeavour such as a rental business or a library. It's similar to the prohibitions on showing it in hospitals, oil rigs, prisons, movie theatres etc. That's not home use and is not authorised under the terms of the licence. Oh, I know that's how it works today, and that's fine. That's how everything related to intellectual works have been so far as well, but if you take Sheepherder's take on the whole thing, then selling a game to someone else is the same as denying the copyright holder their cut of the profit, and is morally equal to piracy. I was trying to make sheepherder define why he thought the EULA for a DVD would be interpreted that way, while the EULA for a game would magically make reselling it "piracy". Since, after all, that's what the gaming industry is basically labelling it now, and what sheepherder's been arguing for in his last few posts.
|
Cyno's lit, bridge is up, but one pilot won't be jumping home.
|
|
|
AutomaticZen
Terracotta Army
Posts: 768
|
Oh, I know that's how it works today, and that's fine. That's how everything related to intellectual works have been so far as well, but if you take Sheepherder's take on the whole thing, then selling a game to someone else is the same as denying the copyright holder their cut of the profit, and is morally equal to piracy. I was trying to make sheepherder define why he thought the EULA for a DVD would be interpreted that way, while the EULA for a game would magically make reselling it "piracy". Since, after all, that's what the gaming industry is basically labelling it now, and what sheepherder's been arguing for in his last few posts. I think the relevant point is this. The game industry doesn't care as they take both as a lost sale and stealing food from the tables of the developers themselves.
|
|
|
|
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
|
I just want to know why y'all hate freedom?
|
"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
|
|
|
Sheepherder
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5192
|
That's how everything related to intellectual works have been so far as well, but if you take Sheepherder's take on the whole thing, then selling a game to someone else is the same as denying the copyright holder their cut of the profit, and is morally equal to piracy. No, read my posts again, because you don't get it. That's the conclusion to the hypothetical "pirating is wrong because the artist doesn't get a cut" or "it's illegal" arguments: everything not a first time purchase is illegal too if one were willing to apply the existing case law. The reason publishers don't attempt to apply the existing law is that they would get fucking reamed in court if they tried and have their special protections vis a vis the validity of an EULA revoked. Instead, they'll wait for a bit until they manage to find a good way to fuck the console resale market that protects them under the DMCA. Again, the entire line of argument has nothing to do with you if you don't show up in threads shitposting about how immoral pirates are.
|
|
|
|
01101010
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12007
You call it an accident. I call it justice.
|
So if I understand this: resale = person 1 owns game - p1 sells game to p2 which passes the license to p2 and thus reliquishes it. One sale is made and only one person has the product/license at any one time. piracy = p1 owns game - p1 manipulates/cracks game and distributes it to p2, p3...pN. One sale is made and many people have the product. That about right? And no this is not a flippant remark, I am genuinely curious.
|
Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
|
|
|
ezrast
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2125
|
A. Piracy is [im|a]moral.
B. Piracy is [not] a significant detriment to the industry.
Two entirely different arguments. Thread started at B, now it's at a confused mix of A, B, trolling, and paint chips.
|
|
|
|
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
|
Mostly paint chips. Also, I don't know how this has gone on so long without someone explaining the difference between a secondary market and pirated games/watches/car-parts/dildos/MtG-cards. If you sell something used YOU DON'T HAVE IT ANY MORE, THIS IS WHY A MARKET WORKS AND EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD ISN'T FREE. EDIT One sale is made and only one person has the product/license at any one time.
Oh hey I didn't see you - you win an imaginary pineapple.
|
"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
|
|
|
Tebonas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6365
|
I'm always to improve my grasp of the English language, eldaec! Where exactly didn't I write what you just did?  Reselling is not the same as pirating. You bought it once, you sold it once. You are transferring ownership of a legally purchased product. After which you yourself don't own this product anymore.
|
|
|
|
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
|
You can have a pineapple too. Which would be an excellent point if I used the money I got from turning in my copy of Halo 3 to buy another copy of Halo 3.
But this guy can't because jesus christ what do you think most users of computer-games/dvds/mtg-cards do when they sell their shit on and no longer have the first game/movie/card? THEY BUY MORE SHIT and drive up the price the OEM can sell for. Hi there economics!
|
"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
|
|
|
NiX
Wiki Admin
Posts: 7770
Locomotive Pandamonium
|
I don't think there's any way you can say it's morally wrong to pirate games. There are no morals involved because everything is done indirectly without any real direct effect on a person. Plus, with the recent removal of most demos, allowing us the opportunity to fully understand the merit of our purchase, we're entitled to try the full game out. Not to mention the recent DLC craze with taking almost finished content, yanking it before release and deciding it would be real nice to sell it for $10-15 dollars. It's not pirating, it's retribution!
|
|
|
|
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
|
You demonstrated that you have no backbone when you posted this.
|
"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
|
|
|
AutomaticZen
Terracotta Army
Posts: 768
|
The moral implications are almost moot, because as we've seen, the publishers and developers think it's the same thing. The Sony SOCOM system hts pirates and used game sales equally. Actually, it hits used gamers more because again, they paid for the game. Or Epic:Michael Capps: I'm not sure how big it is here [in Europe], but the secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you're starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by... if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code.
I've talked to some developers who are saying "If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free". We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used - way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it... Michael Capps: I'd hate to say my players are my enemies - that doesn't make any sense! But we certainly have a rule at Epic that we don't buy any used games - sure as hell you're not going to be recognised as an Epic artist going in and buying used videogames - because this is how we make our money and how all our friends in the industry make money. Or EA:"I'd actually make the point that for us second-hand sales is a very critical situation, because people are selling multiple times intellectual property," said Jens Uwe Intat, senior VP and general manager for European publishing at EA, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz.
"In our understanding of the business model we are actually giving away the rights to play, and if you just pass it on, pass it on, pass it on, that is not comparable to second-hand sales in the normal physical goods area where you have physical wear-out - second-hand cars, second-hand clothes, second-hand books... they're all physically wearing out, so you have an inferior quality product."
"But digital goods is not actually becoming inferior in quality, so people passing that on is actually very challenging for us," he added. Bungie:Marty O'Donnell, Bungie's audio director, has warned that smaller studios face a difficult future if they can't get a return on their investment due to the sale of pre-owned games.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, O'Donnell explained that even larger titles like Halo were effected by the pre-owned games market but that he believed digital distribution would be the way to create a "system that is good and fair to both" consumers and developers.
"It's hard to gauge the effect of used game sales on Halo, but I'm sure it's big," O'Donnell commented. "Complaining about sales when you have a multi-million seller is somewhat difficult to justify, but it seems to me that the folks who create and publish a game shouldn't stop receiving income from further sales." Crazy ass Dyack:It's not because of anything else, it's because the economics alone on piracy. Piracy, everyone talks about, 'why are these single player games multiplayer?' It's got nothing to do with anything else but piracy and used game sales, which to me quite frankly are very similar. Not to say the sane aren't out there:"Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy," he explains. "What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold." like Valve:"We always see these overall numbers, like how much money GameStop's making per year off of used game sales," he says, "but we really don't have a breakdown of details for those. I don't personally know, after being at Valve since Half-Life 1, how many copies of our games per year are sold used, and on the PC versus the 360, so I think there's a certain amount of information that's missing, sort of like piracy. I think a lot of folks cry piracy when a game fails to hit their forecast and it may or may not be part of the problem, and it may or may not be all of the problem, but I think to throw any one reason at any problem is probably a mistake, considering the lack of information on both fronts. The point is that regardless, much of the game industry paints both with the same brush. In the end, piracy and used game sales means no money for them.
|
|
|
|
Azazel
|
I just bought a couple of second hand 360 games off the intermet! I didn't realise when I did it that I was engaging in piracy! 
|
|
|
|
Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
|
True story: if I want a CD that's published by an RIAA member, I always buy it used, specifically so that they don't get my money but I can still say I own all my music legally. 
|
|
« Last Edit: February 25, 2010, 01:45:34 PM by Samwise »
|
|
|
|
|
HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
|
You know what? FUCK YOU. Every single one of you developers and publishers who want to get another piece of the pie when someone buys a used game. FUCK YOU.
I'm a self-published author. People buy my book or my eBook and they pay me once. Never would I or should I expect that I will get one thin fucking dime off of a second person reading that physical copy or a second person getting that eBook copied over to them. I realize the medium is somewhat different. But it seems these jackholes want to ascribe the price charged to the actual act of playing the game. After all, according to them we are renting the intellectual property and buying the physical delivery medium. Which means that reading a novel should get the same consideration but the idea of a secondhand book store sending money to authors isn't even talked about.
People resell their disc games. GET OVER IT. You want to hassle somebody about it, start pressuring Gamestop to give you a cut. When they tell you to go fuck yourselves, please take their advice.
|
|
|
|
caladein
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3174
|
Which would be an excellent point if I used the money I got from turning in my copy of Halo 3 to buy another copy of Halo 3.
People are willing to buy games used for $5-10 off of the new price. If I sold you my copy of a $60 game for $50, I'm most of the way there towards buying a new game. Now of course, I might not buy another game from the same publisher/developer, and your example is crazy, but there's still some income generated that goes back into possibly buying more games. The problem is that you have a middle-man taking a pretty substantial cut from pure arbitrage. There's nothing really wrong with arbitrage if it adds some value for the counterparties, but GameStop doesn't do that. At all. One of the reasons I like EA's approach is that it puts a value on New over-and-above the new car smell. Of course its natural progression is tying the entire game to an account, but that doesn't stop it from making sense.
|
"Point being, they can't make everyone happy, so I hope they pick me." - Ingmar"OH MY GOD WE'RE SURROUNDED SEND FOR BACKUP DIG IN DEFENSIVE POSITIONS MAN YOUR NECKBEARDS" - tgr
|
|
|
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
|
Or EA:"I'd actually make the point that for us second-hand sales is a very critical situation, because people are selling multiple times intellectual property," said Jens Uwe Intat, senior VP and general manager for European publishing at EA, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz. "In our understanding of the business model we are actually giving away the rights to play, and if you just pass it on, pass it on, pass it on, that is not comparable to second-hand sales in the normal physical goods area where you have physical wear-out - second-hand cars, second-hand clothes, second-hand books... they're all physically wearing out, so you have an inferior quality product." "But digital goods is not actually becoming inferior in quality, so people passing that on is actually very challenging for us," he added. Of all the crazy fucked up rationalisations for publishers fucking the paying customer - this is my favourite. Coming, as it does, complete with the idea that today's gamer is going to be exactly as impressed with Duke Nukem today as he was in 1991. Games don't wear out or diminish in value over time? Suck my balls EA. He's right to say its not like other products, because clothes, cars, books actually remain relevant a lot fucking longer than Madden 2006.
|
|
« Last Edit: February 25, 2010, 02:24:47 PM by eldaec »
|
|
"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
|
|
|
Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
|
Which would be an excellent point if I used the money I got from turning in my copy of Halo 3 to buy another copy of Halo 3.
People are willing to buy games used for $5-10 off of the new price. If I sold you my copy of a $60 game for $50, I'm most of the way there towards buying a new game. Now of course, I might not buy another game from the same publisher/developer, and your example is crazy, but there's still some income generated that goes back into possibly buying more games. As you point out, this isn't the reality when you have a middleman sucking up most of the money along the way. But even in a nice frictionless vacuum scenario, the publisher/developer loses out if the consumers have more money than they do time to play games. For example, let's say me and 5 friends have 5 games that we all want to play at some point, and we all have enough disposable income to buy all those games. (Assume that these are single-player games so we don't necessarily need to play them all at once; this is the type of game that's most germane to the discussion anyway.) There are two ways we can do this. One is for each of us to buy a new copy of each game; if each game costs $50, we buy 25 copies altogether and the publisher gets $1250. The other is for each of us to buy a different game, play it, get tired of it, uninstall, resell it to someone else for full price, and use the proceeds to buy another game from someone else in our group; this means that there are 5 purchases from the publisher, 20 among ourselves, and the publisher ends up with $250 ($1000 less than if it weren't possible for us to resell to each other). Now, in a further idealized world where we all had infinite time and inclination to play games, we might spend the saved money on more games from the publisher and it would all even out. Or maybe the games would all have infinite replay value and we'd all want our own copies to keep forever. But in reality how many games are out at any given point that are worth paying full price for, and if you're buying a whole bunch of games how many of them are you ever going back to? In the reselling scenario, we might as well have made copies of the games and passed them around to each other for free to simplify the bookkeeping. In either case the same amount of money ends up in the same pockets and we all play all the games until we get bored and uninstall them. That the reselling is legal and the copying isn't doesn't change the impact that either of those courses of action have on any of the involved parties.
|
|
« Last Edit: February 25, 2010, 02:26:40 PM by Samwise »
|
|
|
|
|
naum
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4263
|
Banter and debate over "piracy" aside, again, you don't "own" the software. You purchase a license to use the software and publisher retains all "ownership" rights. That is why the posture over used games transactions.
It really isn't any different with other software — it's just only enforced for enterprise edition software. Or at least it used to be — Ebay used to pull down used Adobe CS auctions regularly — people would just post them so they could exchange contact info and engage the sale on their own afterwards. Though now, I'm sure there's a host of software still being sold, but believe it's all tagged as "NEW".
You may not share this sentiment, but every time you check that little box in the small print EULA, that is what's in effect.
|
"Should the batman kill Joker because it would save more lives?" is a fundamentally different question from "should the batman have a bunch of machineguns that go BATBATBATBATBAT because its totally cool?". ~Goumindong
|
|
|
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11844
|
Banter and debate over "piracy" aside, again, you don't "own" the software. You purchase a license to use the software and publisher retains all "ownership" rights. That is why the posture over used games transactions.
It really isn't any different with other software — it's just only enforced for enterprise edition software. Or at least it used to be — Ebay used to pull down used Adobe CS auctions regularly — people would just post them so they could exchange contact info and engage the sale on their own afterwards. Though now, I'm sure there's a host of software still being sold, but believe it's all tagged as "NEW".
You may not share this sentiment, but every time you check that little box in the small print EULA, that is what's in effect.
This comes back to the point that any jurisdiction with adequate consumer protection law, the provisions where the publisher pretends that the "license" can't be sold on are unfair contract terms that you are free to ignore. And it doesn't change the point people are making that this is what drm is here to stop, not piracy.
|
"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson "Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
|
|
|
naum
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4263
|
Banter and debate over "piracy" aside, again, you don't "own" the software. You purchase a license to use the software and publisher retains all "ownership" rights. That is why the posture over used games transactions.
It really isn't any different with other software — it's just only enforced for enterprise edition software. Or at least it used to be — Ebay used to pull down used Adobe CS auctions regularly — people would just post them so they could exchange contact info and engage the sale on their own afterwards. Though now, I'm sure there's a host of software still being sold, but believe it's all tagged as "NEW".
You may not share this sentiment, but every time you check that little box in the small print EULA, that is what's in effect.
This comes back to the point that any jurisdiction with adequate consumer protection law, the provisions where the publisher pretends that the "license" can't be sold on are unfair contract terms that you are free to ignore. And it doesn't change the point people are making that this is what drm is here to stop, not piracy. Call me a cynic, but "adequate consumer protection laws" are easily steamrolled by teams of corporate lawyers and fellow interest minded lobbyists. Which brings to surface, another elephant in the DRM squabble — a lot of the legal territory is hazy — fair use, backup copy, lend to RL friend, multiple machines, but if there is a efficient, systematic enforcement (like say, an industry consortium task force of lawyers and lawyer-bots), the "consumer" may be in the "right", but face punitive financial and temporal constraints that prevent true justice.
|
"Should the batman kill Joker because it would save more lives?" is a fundamentally different question from "should the batman have a bunch of machineguns that go BATBATBATBATBAT because its totally cool?". ~Goumindong
|
|
|
|
 |