Yes, I've read more than Starship Troopers {I read that one somewhen back in the 70s} and I'm pretty sure I made no mention/suggestion that Heinlein was 'advocating fascism' at all...;) The oldest Heinlein I have dates back to 1948...;)

Same here. The collector's edition seems to be entirely lacking in that department. Every other game I own has some form of warning.

They are going to have a fun time of defining what a pirate actually is, because they will need a very strict set of definitions and limits on when and where to apply the ban - if it comes into force.

considering that most software and intellectual property allows you to make one copy for yourself to protect the integrity of the original, what if you store that online and then download it whenever you need? will you need to prove that it is not piracy if you do multiple installations over the course of a year or more?

it sounds good, this denial of access for confirmed piracy, but then the evidence must be conclusive and iron clad and thats not going to happen. its SOOOO easy to use someone elses connection to do whatever with, must the victim now prove innocence?
not to mention how do you actually implement denial of access to the internet? the internet is literally everywhere. you might take away the pirate's computer, but what about the cellphone, smartphone, tv, playstation, etc? and thats just in the house! what about cybercafe's, work, public access areas...? implementation is going to be a nightmare

but take it one step further, will EU law supercede national law? if a country gaurantees freedoms of expression and distribution of data, will this law be allowed when it infringes on a countries soverignty? look at www.thepiratebay.org, countries and organisations have been trying for YEARS to close it down, but its freedom and continuance is gauranteed through the swedish constitution

laws which transferse boundaries of international soverignty are tricky and WILL be subject to abuse by the people who can wield the biggest stick...or veto

Copyright is not notification of an end user license agreement. Did you sign an EULA for the last book you bought? Software isn't special just because some people in the software industry want it to be. We're protected against fraud specifically to stop that sort of tactic, and the onus is to be on the buyer to figure out the hidden terms to his purchase?

There are copyrights on nearly everything you buy, and almost none of them come with an EULA. You have no EULA written in a book, you have standard copyright notification. There is no EULA for the instruction manual to your TV, or the packaging on your soap. Everything down the the label on your ass(Levi perhaps?) is protected by copyright and or trademark. If you don't know standard copyright law, then your problem is ignorance of your own laws. Ignorance of the law is not a defense, legal precedent abounds. For those copying and distributing software, yeah, it's illegal, the EULA has no bearing on that.

EULA's aren't law, though they generally cover the law, some of them only cover the law, resale, distribution, reverse engineering, all that good stuff you're not supposed to do with software. Some of them, like EA's current ones, have restrictions that are not law. They are just like any other contract, except one you don't see at purchase. They weren't even backed by any law until the atrocious DMCA.

There is severely bad case law backing up the asinine view that you can be bound by a contract not disclosed at sale, but the majority of the court rulings have been that EULA's are non-binding unless disclosed prior to sale. The DMCA was passed in part to change that little problem.

Unfortunately for the DMCA, the exchange of legal tender is a binding contract. As legal tender is constitutionally guaranteed, the piece of unconstitutional shit that is the DMCA is trumped and will be tossed if we ever get an honest ruling on it. All terms must be presented at sale, any terms that aren't, aren't part of the binding contract that is the exchange of legal tender. Any terms in the EULA you haven't been shown at sale that aren't already covered by copyright law, such as EA's termination clauses, are illegal. It doesn't get any less gray than that for copyright law in the US.

@psychoak

You are given notice of EULA at install. It's in the installer. The software won't install without your agreement to the EULA. Furthermore, you have failed to address a pertinent matter. If you are so bothered by being denied a copy of the EULA at the time of purchase then what reasonable steps have you undertaken to obtain one? Did you contact the software distributor and/or owner prior to the sale requesting one?

Bait and switch is the classic definition of a type of consumer fraud; it requires there is adverstizing or signage suggesting something is true, such as the price is $1.99, only to find at the cash register the price is actually $3.99. Or, you find the store clerk telling you we are out of the $1.99 item but have this $4.99 item available instead.

So, how have you been mislead by the software distributor and/or owner into believing your software purchase was not the subject of an EULA and what reasonable steps did you take to ascertain from the software distributor and/or owner whether or not an EULA applied. Seeing as though you allege your so familiar with the law and you demonstrate knowledge that such things are common yet you also claim you bear no obligation to obtain copy of the EULA prior to sale? I don't think any court or attorney would support these claims of yours.

Let's look at a real-world scenario. By default any created work is covered under copyright law (which says no distributions of any kind), but copyright law does allow for custom licenses to be issued.

Let's pull a book off my shelf. The first one happens to be Dune: The Machine Crusade. A page in the beginning state that I may not make copies of it, store it or disseminate it. I may also not distribute it in any form other than the original binding. Therefore I retain the right to resell the book itself (depriving me of it) and to lend it to a friend.

Now, let's look at software. We will take a industry giant (Microsoft) as a case study. The Windows Vista Home Basic EULA is available here:

http://download.microsoft.com/documents/useterms/Windows%20Vista_Ultimate_English_36d0fe99-75e4-4875-8153-889cf5105718.pdf

Some terms from it that drew my attention:







Therefore we have two products, both covered under copyright law. One is sold to me and one is not. But interestingly enough, while the book felt it necessary to state that the original binding is required, Microsoft did not. Indeed, the media is never mentioned, other than at the time of purchase. The license is the label, not the media it is on.

Microsoft also has this page http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326246 that states that if I manage to lose/damage my copy of the software, then I will be able to get a copy from them again (at an additional cost). Therefore I can assume that they don't consider the software CD to be anything other than a way to get the software to me, and the lack of possession of a CD does not in any way violate my use of the software.

Why doesn't the game companies fall under the same restrictions, then? Now I have to have BOTH the CD and the license to play. And losing the CD now suddenly voids my license? After all, I lose the ability to exercise my rights in the license.

And it has been suggested we are teenage law-readers. I am in the IT software industry. If a client buys from me, they buy licenses, not software. If they lose the media, I will gladly replace it. If they lose the license key, I will replace it with the one I have on record. There will be an additional fee payable, but it's a token to cover time done to research the original purchase.

That has been the case under the US interpretation of Copyright Law...but not universally throughout all signatories to the Berne treaty.

Example....it was until recently [about 2 years] illegal for an Australian [in Oz, obviously] to copy any form of CD/DVD etc. in any way what-so-ever.

However....it was deemed appropriate by the ACCC that this absolute should NOT apply to 'critical software required for the furthering of your business' which includes such things as the Windows OS....or Photoshop, etc., but in no way includes music or games [unless you could argue that sudden loss through original's damage could injure your business].

Australia [through the recent free trade agreement with the US] now is aligned with the US interpretation which allows 'Fair Use' to encompass the backing-up purchased software, etc.

Not everyone has 'fan art' or 'fair use' inclusions in their 'Law'....;)

If it was right to charge everything again because you lost the physical media of your rightfully purchased software, i believe we would have seen a lot of much lower quality CDs in the stuff we pay for...

Concerning the burguer software, i'm not sure that when you get a Big Mac, you paid for the license to use it in your organism until it gets assimilated

Haha....;)

I'm a bit confused regarding your opinions on Starship Troopers.

You say it was a treatise on fascism - which, if it was, it was certainly not arguing against the government on display in the novel. I think it's awfully hard to argue he wasn't on at least on some level advocating for the nationalistic and military based government in the novel. If you thought it was fascism, then it is a natural leap to believe it was advocating a fascist government. I disagree that it is fascism, I *do* believe he was arguing for a militaristic and nationalistic form of government, albeit with it's own checks and balances, and in fact one I disagree with heartily. But he makes a valid case for it.


But now - you've replied that you never thought he was arguing for fascism in a rather "How did you get that idea?" tone of script, in which case I have to ask - why did you bring it up?

in all honesty, it sounds like you didn't want to answer the original question and bringing it up as a "a treatise on Fascism within Western Democracies" managed to neatly sidestep the issue: Whether, by arguing for a Legal Framework that deprives the buyer of a work of the rights they would have if they bought a physical property (and indeed, one that allows for EULA's that extend those rights even further), the seller does not in some fashion take onto themselves additional responsibilities.

Because that was the original question, and frankly, I have no compunctions aspiring to and applauding the principle that those who are granted a larger portion of the rights in a transaction being also gifted a greater portion of the responsibilities.

If you disagree, by all means make your case for disagreeing.

Jonnan

I am having a feeling that as long as the internet exists, software piracy is going to stay. I am not implying by any means that i am advocating for the position that software piracy is a good thing. What i mean is that...the internet is a virtual world where people can have in a sense upload their existence. This might sound very obvious to many netizens. But a hunddreded years from now, this simple fact will probably be so obvious that it will not even warrant any kind of philsohpical discourse on its existential meanings.

To get back to my point. Unless there are some major cultural change in attitudes, as long as software exists and the internet exists, piracy will always reamian a way of way of obtaining software for some people. Companies and the public will find a way to cope or deal with it. I am guessing that until the day where the majority of public on average are knowledgable enough to create their own software, until such a time exists, people will probably have a change of attitudes towards piracy. The sad truth is, on average, people have a very callous attitude towards downloading digital software.

I am actually suprised that there are so much worrying about software piracy in comparison to information theft via digital means. I am wondering why as an intellectual challenge, hackers and crackers don't focus on information theft instead of cracking software. It is much more intellectually challenging to be able to decomplie a piece of software than making a crack for software programs. After all, the technical difficulties are much greater.

If I am not mistaken, making a "crack" for a game requires decompilation of the sofware.
And I have a hunch hackers focus so much on removing DRM's *because* the offended companies squeal so much about it, not because they have this evil urge to steal stuff. The stronger, more complex a DRM involved, the greater the incentive for hacker groups to try and best it.

So basically, if you want your game receiving *less* attention from pirate groups, drop the DRM. Sure it will get pirated, but at least you save money on the DRM system licence. And you give less hassle to your legitimate customers. If I were making a commercial game, that's what I would do.

I mean, I don't understand companies which use DRM - look at the track record for those systems. They are cracked, sometimes as soon as the game is released! That means hackers already have a standardized way of removing copy protection.
So why do some companies still insist on wasting money on methods which are proven to be utterly innefective?

I am sure that in comparison with the publishing (as in books) industry, there are less literary piracy compare with software piracy. I don't have any figures to support this, it is just my impression. The point is...i wonder with photocopiers available, why are not more people photocopying books en masses. We never heard of book publishers losing money, but then we hear a lot about it from game companies.


In a lot of technical software, one can't do anything with it publicly with out a purchase of a legit copies. Like if i have Mathematica, and i need to publish some drawings done using mathematica, i can't do it without buying a real copy. In Autocad, it is even more stringet, any publish works done using autocad requires the user to also include the display of a legit serieal code. I think for pc gaming, developers should have some real differential benefits to those who have purchased a copy of their software over and above just releasing simple patching or being able to be able to log on online doing multiplayer using a legit cd key.

A game CD takes a few minutes to copy.

Thieves are lazy bastards by definition....

Have you ever tried to photocopy a book?....;)

When books go fully digital you will - one of the light hearted examples below actually already is.

Meanwhile contemplate photocopying that favorite discourse of yours Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, all 100 pages of it, complete with bulging page and nasty gutter distorting the copying. Let alone Encyclopedia Britannica - all 36 volumes - complete with quality binding.

Enough to drive anyone legal - it has built in DRM

Although this is hopelessly off-topic....read my lips...I said 'treatise', not 'advocating' or 'arguing'.

A dictionary is your friend....;)

Actually, MMO and online-only games are the only ones, such is my observation, which have little to worry about when it comes to piracy. MMO's in particular are so designed that it is pretty much impossible not to have a legit copy and play. And while pirated copies of multiplayer games such as Battlefield series or similar exist, you cannot play the game as it was meant to be played.

Aside from that, singleplayer games cannot have much in the "differential benefits" aside from quality customer support and perhaps quality additional content. Though as we may see with many expansions and content updates such as Valve's HL2 Episodes, that can be pirated as well.

I still have to reiterate though: companies are not losing as much money as they think because of piracy. Pirated games are a ghost commodity - they do not exist for real, mainly because people who pirate games would not buy those games if a pirated copy was not available, or if they would, they would buy only one or two games and certainly not the whole sackful which you can pilfer on the net.

So while monetary damages do exist, they are so minimal they can be ignored. Its like complaining about mice eating some of your grain in a silo. Protect that grain so that mice cannot get it and they will certainly not going to suddenly sprout wallets and buy the stuff.

Games are a luxury, not a necessity. You cannot "force" people to go legit if they don't want to or their appetites exceed their paying power. In that case, they will simply not play games.

I live near universities, and there are plenty of photocopying shop around. Students flock to there every beginning of a semester to photocopy their textbook. And they photocopy entire texts even though if that text is like 1500 pages.

Burning a cd takes few mins, i thought it takes a few hours. I burn cd for my own files, not games, but just documents of a few gigs here and there put together. It takes like few hours. Usually, there are even errors in the burning process, or the dvd don't work after. That is not fair. I am not even burning games, only my own stuff of my own making and my cd burner treats me like i am a thief.

Get a better burner.

I am not disagreeing that pirates may be lazy, but in regard to photocopying books, why would you waste you time when you can just go legally borrow one from the library?  Last I checked I couldn't legally borrow a piece of software from anyware.

Actually, that exact argument has been going on in the publishing industry for some time - a lot of publishers have been arguing in favor of DRM for awhile now.

For counterexamples, there is the Baen Free Library/E-books or for the technically inclined there is the O'Reilly Safari, both of whom have come down fairly solidly in the "No DRM" corner and seen to have had good luck with it.

The Baen Free Library has been brought up as an example before. Perhaps not in this thread, but in similar ones. The point is that a particular publisher voluntarily giving up some rights to a works for promotional/advertising purposes does NOT give the general public the right to force that same decision on other publishers. No matter how well the scheme works.

In reality, the BFL is on par with the public library in terms of advertising effectiveness. The form of the promotional material makes the customer much more likely to purchase their own copy - who wants to read a book on a computer screen, and who wants to depend on the library having a copy available when you get the urge to reread?

Whose forcing anything? The argument was whether or not DRM was required in order to make money on intellectual property, and it's a valid theory to state that it does.

Lie any other valid theory, what makes it a valid theory is that it makes predictions that can be verified or falsified, and I think the Baen Free Library, Safari, and indeed Galactic Civilizations II do a very good job of falsifying that prediction.

That doesn't 'force' anyone to abandon the theory in their business model. All sorts of people use bad theories to predict what they need to do to make money - they waste money doing so, it may or may not be enough money to kill the business, and hey, it's their money to waste.

But, if they waste their money in ways that happen to annoy me, I'm not going to buy their products, and will probably point at them and laugh about it too. All sorts of people laugh at *me* when I'm stupid - I see no reason not to return the favor - {G}.

Jonnan

is not good to have full progrmas for free, but is too expencive.

to hell piracy is good

I'm quoting this just because I found it utterly hilarious.