Bigeyez said:
Therumancer said:
When you paid for Xbox Live you agreed to this clause in their Terms of Service
You agree that you are using only authorized software and hardware to access the Service, that your software and hardware have not been modified in any unauthorized way
Unauthorized meaning modded in this case. So Microsoft are fully within their right to ban ANYONE with a modded console, regardless of whether or not they use it to cheat or not. Don't like it? Don't play online with a modded console.
OT: So InformationWeek basically took a guesstimate made by a random employee and turned it into a fact of how many consoles were banned? Oh yeah thats great reporting right there...
I received 3 responses to what I wrote, and will try and handle them all with this response. Apologies if this is confusing I don't want to generate too much spam.
Well, in this paticular case I am not saying that they do not have the right, but rather that they should not have the right. There is a distinct differance. I'm not claiming that they did anything illegal, merely that what they did is wrong, and probably SHOULD be illegal.
As far as comments about "well when you clicked accept on the EULA you signed away rights and agreed to let them do this" I do not feel that such "contracts" should be binding. Similar to how many doctors will get patients to sign waivers claiming that they won't sue for malpractice (or whatever) but such agreements are just paper and fundementally meaningless in any serious conflict. The goverment basically having decided that rights are inherant and not something you can sign away to another citizen in that context. I feel this is a similar type of situation, and demonstrates why EULAs and such should be either done away with entirely, or simply officially declared non-binding.
Especially seeing as the terms of the EULA are not disclosed when you buy a console, or even most software.
Whether or not you agree with me here, this is still my opinion.
The issue of censorship is something else entirely, and again comes down to companies pandering to censors rather than fighting them. I have a hard time defending a company in it's efforts to quash free speech. Stopping cheaters is one thing, censoring people is quite
another. The problem with going after modders in general is that at the same time they are nailing the cheaters, they are nailing those who are simply bucking censorship, and in targeting them I feel that even if within their rights Microsoft is doing the wrong thing. Of course then again I feel there shouldn't be any need to mod to begin with, Microsoft simply shouldn't be supporting any kind of media/information locks.
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As far as companies being forbidden to "make money" (in response to other posts), I am a firm believer in the American ideal of capitolism. It's fine to make money. I do gripe at people for being ridiculously greedy, but that's all I generally do since really I don't think it's right to put laws into place to stop people from profiteering, it's up to consumers to do that. Mostly in cases of companies making a ton of money I simply call "BS" to some of their claims and call greed and corruption when I see greed and corruption.
On the other hand also understand that the American ideal of capitolism DOES put certain limitations on capitolism, which to some means that it's not true capitolism. For example in the US it is illegal to either create or hold a monopoly, OR to engage in "Cartel" type behavior. The idea in the US being that there always must be competition, and no one person or group of people is allowed to exclusively control something. In cases where a monopoly or virtual monopoly is nessicary for a service, such as in the case of utility companies, then the goverment regulates them and it becomes the exact anti-thesis of true capitolism.
Examples of this can be found in what has happened with Ted Turner and his attempts to basically become the god emperor of all media. The goverment has stepped in to stop him from doing this in the past, and keeps an eye on him otherwise.
When it comes to cartel behavior an example is the recent contreversy over US gas prices where gas companies were accused of working together to set prices and coordinate a price hike. This kind of coodination being illegal in the US. The idea being that people in the same business are supposed to compete with each other to provide the highest quality product for the lowest price as opposed to doing things like the gaming industy has been doing by basically agreeing that all games will cost X amount of money and adjusting release schedules so products won't have to compete with each other and so on.
In a general sense I mostly yell "corruption" in cases where these principles are not followed. It has nothing to do with this subject for example, but when I talk about the gaming industry's business practices, it seems to me that the issue is primarly one where for all the millions of gamers there just aren't enough of us for the goverment to really care.
This is getting long and rambling, however I will say that I am hardly against companies making money. However if you act like a greedy, corrupt twit, I have no objections to calling you one.
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As far as the the nature of my "sources" goes here and in other threads, take a look at my posts and how much I cover. A lot of times the information is there, it's just people miss it. In other cases it would simply take a huge post and make it even huger. In yet others like THIS case I myself mentioned my own sources being dubious, so pointing this out in response to me is more along the "duh" catagory. All I was saying is that from the noise I was looking at it seems like the problem could be even bigger.
I myself pointed out nobody knew for sure, of course Microsoft wants to downplay it, and others want to expand it. We may not ever get hard figures. We will have to see what happens.
