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.