Mod maker thinks he's the police
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@Yamikuronue Again, it's not my fault if the people debating with me are pathetically ignorant about something they're talking about all authoritative-like and CBA to do even the most basic research. But if you really want...
The Sky is Rising
A report from 2012 showing pretty conclusively that, as of 5 years ago at least, the so-called "piracy crisis" simply does not exist."https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/562830-the-sky-is-rising.html
2013 update:
2014 update:
Piracy fails to prevent Hollywood from having a record year in sales:
2010
2011
2013
2015Copy Culture in the US and Germany:
Piracy is not motivated principally by "wanting things for free," but by bad service and availability.
Ed Sheeran: "Illegal file sharing is what made me."
An actual musician's view on how "exposure" works. Not surprisingly, it's far more insightful and interesting than The Oatmeal's predictably insipid blather.I could go on (and on and on; I'm drawing on years and years of research here) but I've already been composing this for 3 hours and it's getting close to time to leave for work. This should make a good starting point.
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@The_Quiet_One said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
You are rationalizing and justifying pirating games, saying they're giving them "free advertising," and "will pay for it later." It sounds to me like you're saying it's okay.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that when you look at the actual evidence, rather than jumping straight to a bunch of knee-jerk emotional condemnations, the picture that emerges is far more complex and nuanced than you'd think at first glance.
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Good for Ed Sheeran. He voluntarily decided to be lax in music sharing. Your argument seems to be that, because sales are booming, we should relinquish developers and publishers the ability for them to decide how they want people to attain their software. That's bullshit.
Let me make it clear that I do agree that draconian DRM policies and publishers who think piracy is as damaging as they claim is wrong. Where we disagree is fixing this by enacting laws and regulations to prevent this. Because guess what? If the reports you've just provided are true, and developers are literally shooting themselves in the foot by being too restrictive in how they combat piracy, then let them kill themselves over it. Kinda like if a restaurant in town is known to have shitty service with 40 minute wait times for cheeseburgers, the solution is going to work itself out, instead of adding more complicated rules where a bureaucrat dictates how a restaurant cooks its burgers.
@masonwheeler said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
No, I'm not. I'm saying that when you look at the actual evidence, rather than jumping straight to a bunch of knee-jerk emotional condemnations, the picture that emerges is far more complex and nuanced than you'd think at first glance.
You sound like you have an emotional condemnation of having to prove you bought the software, so don't look in the mirror first.
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@accalia said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
it's an optional mod, that doesn't work for people who pirated the game.... people who got the game legit are unaffected by the restriction, and sure the modder didn't handle the situation gracefully but still...... the check only locks out people who didn't pay for what is a fucking awesome game that everyone should buy with actual money because PlatinumGames needs to make more games like this one.
that everyone should buy with actual money
See, that's the thing. Most pirates couldn't buy the game anyway because they're in a totally foreign market where the game isn't sold/isn't released yet, or they don't have enough money because their country isn't doing as well as a first-world country. It's not a lost sale and it's not theft because copying software doesn't create a loss of assets for the publisher.
I'm not going to outright defend the practice of piracy because I'm a software developer and it'd be hypocritical for me to say that other software developers don't deserve to get paid for their work. But I do believe that the time and money many companies spend on anti-piracy measures is a total waste. The publishers are being hustled by the clowns that make DRM software. It's similar to the way pharmaceutical companies hustle companies across the U.S. by convincing them if they don't drug test everyone for their sit-around-at-a-desk job then they might get a heroin addict without even realizing! as if those kinds of drugs don't take a visible toll on someone's physical features and mannerisms.
For the record, I did pirate games for a while when I was a teenager (who had no income) but it's a fact that I would not have bought a number of games if I didn't pirate them out to try them first and get frustrated at the fact that I like the game, but can't play it in multiplayer mode with anyone online. So really I believe the entire piracy issue is a wash, unless some scumbag company pirates licenses for their whole staff.
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@accalia said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
You know the only thing stopping people from pirating NES/SNES games? making the cartidges.
If piracy was as bad as the industry claim, we would be moving back to cartridges. Clearly they saved more using a cheaper media than piracy took from them. Going back to cartridges beat having to be always online IMO.
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@Yamikuronue said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
@Yamikuronue I'm being told this is incorrect. Instead, this has to do with Developer D owing Developer W a burrito, being harassed about it for months, and finally cracking and bringing in pie... a month ago. This is the follow-up anyway.
If somebody owed me a burrito, I wouldn't let them pay me with a pie.
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@anotherusername said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
If somebody owed me a burrito, I wouldn't let them pay me with a pie.
Depends on the burrito and the pie. Some pies are better than some burritos…
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@anotherusername I found out because the owed developer was still angling for a burrito even after pie 2.0
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@masonwheeler said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
once I have a copy of the software in my possession, the law says that I am presumed to have already bought it
Citation needed. The law says nothing about whether you're presumed to have bought something just because it's in your possession. Now, it does say that the cops can't come and take something away from you unless they can prove that you came into possession of it unlawfully, but unless the DRM is erasing data off your hard drive, you can't say that this situation is the same.
@masonwheeler said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
at that point, the idea that they can "refuse to sell it to me" is a logical absurdity because they already sold it!
It's not a question of whether they sold it. It's a question of whether they have certain rights to decide how it's permitted to be used. Copyright gives the copyright holder certain rights to decide how it's allowed to be used, even if you possess a copy of it.
Now, if your copy doesn't work... well that's a different matter. If you contact the entity that holds the copyright, they'll probably want evidence that you came into possession of it legally, before they'll be willing to spend much time or effort trying to fix or replace your copy.
Really, about the only claim that you could plausibly try to make of wrongdoing on their part would be that they were intentionally trying to defraud you out of the use of something that you had purchased -- and then the onus is on you to prove it. Even if you could prove that you've purchased it, you wouldn't be able to prove that it's fraud, because the stated purpose of DRM isn't to prevent customers from using it.
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@masonwheeler said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
@The_Quiet_One said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
You own the rights to use the software. You do NOT own the software.
I own that copy of the software. Locking me out of it is obviously "action taken against me."
If you own the copy, then locking you out of it is obviously a glitch, and it will be dealt with like any other glitch. The DRM isn't supposed to lock out people who own it.
Your software having a glitch that you don't like is a customer support issue, not a legal one.
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@anotherusername said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
Copyright gives the copyright holder certain rights to decide how it's allowed to be used, even if you possess a copy of it.
Before the DMCA, it didn't. Even after the DMCA it technically still doesn't, but publishers have been exploiting a loophole in the DRM language of the DMCA since day 1 to assert this non-existent right, and unfortunately enough courts bought it early enough on to set a precedent.
Before the DMCA, the controlling precedent was Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, which held that publishers have no right to what we would call a EULA in modern parlance, and the right to control the usage of the product terminates at the time the sale takes place. This principle, known as the First Sale Doctrine, served the US well from 1908 all the way to 1998, nearly an entire century, before the DMCA made a mess of the entire thing by legitimizing DRM, which could then be used as an end-run around the entire issue.
The true irony of it all is that copyright was originally created with the explicit purpose of reining in abusive publishers. But ever since the 1970s, it's been turned on its head, enabling them to be more and more abusive with legal impunity.
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@masonwheeler said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
@Maciejasjmj Never in my entire life have I been asked for a ticket once I'm already inside the theater, nor have I seen that happen to anyone else. Quite simply put, you're presumed to be there legitimately.
I'm not sure whether to assume that you had no idea that that's precisely how a lot of trains operate, or you knew and just didn't care because
.
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@anotherusername What do trains have to do with movies?
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@dkf said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
@anotherusername said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
If somebody owed me a burrito, I wouldn't let them pay me with a pie.
Depends on the burrito and the pie. Some pies are better than some burritos…
If somebody owed me a burrito, I wouldn't let them pay me with a crap burrito either.
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@masonwheeler copyright allows the copyright holder to make limitations such as "no public performances", and yes, "no unauthorized copying or distribution". It had to go to court to have it decided that yes, owning a license to use a copy for private personal use automatically grants you the right to sell (transfer) that license to someone else (as in, they now have that license, and you no longer do).
If DRM violates the customer's right to resell something they legitimately purchased, then it's defective.
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@masonwheeler said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
@anotherusername What do trains have to do with movies?
If there's a movie playing on the train, then exactly as much as movie theaters do.
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@anotherusername said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
If DRM violates the customer's right to resell something they legitimately purchased, then it's defective.
...and virtually all DRM does that, even the "innocuous" ones.
For example, I have some unwanted Steam games, but I can't sell them to you.
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@masonwheeler Theoretically, it would be possible to make that work, given a proper DRM framework (it'd just be a matter of saying account A doesn't have the auth token any more — which would be something they'd probably need to be online to assert — and account B does; the second half is trivial with existing infrastructure) but the publishers aren't keen to technically enable it without someone managing to force them legally, probably by a suitable civil action in the US or other major market. They've not got a lot of financial incentive to do so, as they make more profit from doing a second sale.
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@anotherusername said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
Now, it does say that the cops can't come and take something away from you unless they can prove that you came into possession of it unlawfully
Allow me to introduce you to asset forfeiture. Proof? Hah! That's for amateurs.
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@Dreikin said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
@anotherusername said in Mod maker thinks he's the police:
Now, it does say that the cops can't come and take something away from you unless they can prove that you came into possession of it unlawfully
Allow me to introduce you to asset forfeiture. Proof? Hah! That's for amateurs.
Civil Forfeiture: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – 16:30
— LastWeekTonight
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@ben_lubar He is an embarrassment to his home country
Ed Sheeran: Reinventing pop music
