rsvp42 said:
Why is this news? "Random dude can't play DA2! Everyone get up in arms over it!"
The reason why this is news is that it clearly shows willingness by a company to exact a disproportionate response to a perceived injustice. As end users, we've tolerated their extreme levels of DRM and control over our access to their software solely on the promise that they'd be fair about keeping it. We're seeing that companies, at least EA and Bioware, cannot be trusted with that degree of power.
Asking whether Bioware had
sold your souls to the EA devil is hardly cause to ban someone from a forum, let alone block them from registering games. Presuming this is the reason the poor sod was blocked, it was inappropriate action by the moderator.
I'm curious, on the other hand, if said moderator knew the full consequences of his suspending the guy. If this is genuinely the first time that someone was inhibited from playing a game due to overzealous forum policing, this may be a matter of an overreaching policy, a la the Bloody Code [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code]
EA could escape backlash if they apologized, updated their policies (or at least trained their forum moderators) and compensated the fellow in some small way. (
Here, have a free game.) I suspect EA will remain inept about it, in which case, I advise everyone to do as
DTWolfwood suggests and avoid the Bioware and EA forums. Indeed, there are plenty of places to dialogue, and no reason to risk the consequences of distressing their forum serenity.
Incidentally, has there been any case taken to court in which egregious segments of a EULA (or a ToS) were upheld? Most of these are contracts that have never been challenged, usually due to lack of need, and a lot have been resolved by settlement or through arbitration so as to avoid rocking the EULA boat. If it ever emerged that a EULA (or, again, a ToS) was absolutely legally binding, or was absolutely not, a lot of shit would proceed to go down.
Incidentally,
Whargarble, the Bill of Rights is in full effect within the US and to American corporations. No private entity, including your workplace, can prevent you from speaking your mind (with reasonable limits, e.g. slander, panic-inducing speech, classified data, etc.), or technically, can search your belongings when leaving their brick-and-mortar store. These issues are seldom challenged in court (exceptions being things like the right to assembly on school grounds), which is why institutions get away with it. But there's valid grounds for a suit here, if he can prove that damages were incurred from not getting to play the game.
Comparably, if Microsoft ever used their kill switch for
Vista or
Windows 7 and caused a person or business to lose a day's work,
they would be liable for it, unless they had ironclad cause to do so.
238U.
