The Needles: Michael Pachter, Ubisoft and the Perils of Rights and Wrong

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

I don't wish to argue a moral standpoint(and I wish it to be known that I pay for my games), but I can't quite convince myself that downloading some copied data and stealing someones car are the same thing...because they're clearly not.

But to the people that created the game and rely on the income it generates to put food on their table, they are.

Is that strictly right? I would imagine that the people who work for any given company will be drawing salaries, not working all year round with the vague hope of collecting some commission when a game is released(which unless you're EA or activision, may be 2 or 3 years...which just doesn't add up). It might damage returns on investments and harm the company, but the people who are doing the creating are surely getting paid.

That really wasn't my point though, and I'd like to again stress that I am not a pirate. But data and a car aren't the same thing.

True, but if the game does not sell well then the studio might not get new funding for another project and lay-off the people that were drawing that salary.

And yah I agree, data is not the same as a car... but they aren't even in the same ballpark in price either. Lets just look at media then and say, if you steal a DVD to get a movie or d/l that movie off the Internet, you still have stolen the data. The physical DVD is just about worthless compared to the data that is on it. So what is the difference? Just because you can put it in your pocket? I have to admit, even while writing this, I find it hard to say they are the same. There is something inside me that says having that physical copy is inherently more valuable then just the data. But the truth of it is, the data is the part that give me the entertainment and, therefore, is the valuable part.

I understand you don't pirate, so I am not trying to pick on your stance... just using your post as a jumping off point.

I think it's sad when companies go bust, but my thinking is really that it's just too bad. I don't think we should allow industry insiders to tell us how we should feel about the issue, because there is such a ridiculously obvious bias there.

I just responded to someone else, I gave the newspaper industry as an example. If they were claiming that anyone who reads their newspaper without paying(your friend might hand it to you, you might find it lying around...whatever)is a thief and should be locked up. They would be laughed at, even though they would have a valid claim too as something has been consumed without the creators seeing any money. It's worth pointing out that the newspaper industry is dying whilst gaming is flourishing everywhere other than the PC platform, which is still making money...just less.

I'm not comfortable with letting the industry make up the rules as it goes along, it sets a nasty precedent where the consumer is obviously going to lose.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I recall Securom violating my right to privacy, as the product essentially worked like malware, and installed without my consent and (previously) knowledge.

Even if it were put into the EULA, I was boned anyway because company policy dictated that I could never get a refund on that software, even if I did not install it. The Zeidenberg case presented in Andy Chalk's wikipedia link seems to imply that I should be able to return the software, as noted in the UCC.

That's how sticky this notion of "software ownership" is, and why I don't bother to do business with companies who will not even provide the intention of fair-trade with their customers. I'm fully convinced that they are attempting to wrest control completely from the hands of the customer with this legal voodoo.

Unlimited reinstalls? Fine. That's fair. I paid for a non-perishable product, not a service.
DRM, 3 installs with non-negotiable terms and no possibility for a refund? That's a hazy line that borders on illegal, or at least, an unconscionable contract. The terms are unfair even in the best of circumstances. Upgrade your OS? You lose. Upgrade your computer? You lose. Get a virus? You lose.

No other product-centric industry works like this.

 

[The Lunatic]

MW2 is 30 quid on amazon. Just saying. If you watch out for offers and bonuses and such, you're not ever going to have to pay full price for a title.

And nobody is dropping prices due to success. If profits reflected on the price which the consumer has to pay, petrol would be 30p a litre.

I was referring to the Black Ops Call of Duty game. Cheapest I can find that is about £45.

True, these days prices for games is in the hands of the publishers, who, regardless of how much I idealized the industry as being "All about the entertainment" and "The joys of creating games" are in it mostly for profit.

Just one of those things really.

If I ever was to become a Video Game Developer (I'm trying!) I wouldn't really mind piracy much. If I'm creating something for people to be entertained by, frankly I wouldn't mind some people getting it for free.

I suppose I just don't see why people are trying to make people so miserable over a form of entertainment.

Publishers and Devs are still making good sums of money, saying you want to put people in jail when you're in the entertainment business is a bit beyond my understanding.

 

[samsonguy920]

Firstly, I'd like to say I mentioned Michael Pachter smelling of poo long before this furor, which means I'm ahead of the curve (go me!).

Whatever floats your boat, skippy.

While I do like Steam remember that it wasn't all plain sailing with that either, some people kinda play Half Life 2 on the intended date because of a glitch it had, Valve are well known to playtest everything to death but that slight oversight made for very angry Valve loyalist. Also when either steam or a game was being patched it would "lock" out so you couldn't play it, it ruined a weekend pro tournament. But now its a pretty sleek and stable system, what I'm saying is these might just be teething issues for Ubisoft much like Valve had.

I am wondering if you are under the impression that most pc player's issue with Ubisoft is their faulty servers, then you, like Pachter, are missing the mark. The issue with Ubisoft came up long before the server DRM came online, and back when it was just announced. The fact that the only way you can play a current release Ubisoft product on your PC is by being online to their servers through the entirety of gameplay, is what is the issue. Servers, being built by man, are bound to be faulty. And I highly doubt all of Ubisoft's issues with the servers since they came online have been due to hackers. It's more likely due to inexperience dealing with a new implementation, as well as unexpected traffic through those servers. Granted, that is partly what happened with Steam, and Ubisoft's servers are bound to be more dependable in time. Maybe.
But you need to take into account that Ubisoft is requiring a lot of info for you to share so you can play your AC2, SH5, RUSE, or Splinter Cell game. Stuff Steam doesn't even ask for.
Then there is the fact that Ubisoft won't be around forever, and support for games only lasts so long. How long do you think Ubi is willing to put money into their servers that they aren't even getting direct revenue for, for the games they are "protecting?" It may very well be a shorter lifespan than what Halo 2 got to see on Xbox LIVE. And where will pc players be then when the support is dropped? Will Ubisoft release a patch removing the DRM? Maybe. They may very well not, since they may think they don't need to when we are probably all playing the next best thing.
Gamers don't give up on the games they really enjoy. I still play Unreal Tournament 2004, Evil Genius, and other older games. Neither of those games still receive support from their publishers. Hell Evil Genius doesn't even have a company backing it anymore. I wouldn't be able to if either Epic or Sierra had the same DRM idea. Short of hitting bittorrent sites for a crack. Which might be laudible, but how many of those "cracks" you might find might also include a virus or other malware just because somebody thought it would be funny. That's the risk of dealing with black market items. Which DRM cracks and other hacks fall under.
In the end, Ubisoft's DRM only makes Ubisoft the winner. Thinking we might someday come to love it is a sad way to think, since you aren't even thinking for yourself anymore.

I like Stardocks and the guys who made Zeno Clash approach, which could be called the Green Day tactic, of "hey guys, if you pirate our game and you enjoy it, can you maybe buy it?, we kinda need the money".

And that approach actually has had its benefits, as Stardocks has seen a decent revenue stream for their game. And even more now that Zeno Clash is available on the Mac.

And I'm liking the current trend in the video game industry where when they cock things up they give us free stuff, such as Sony with the PSPgo and even Valve to assuage PC users with regards to support on the PC we got FREE PORTAL!.

I'm not too sure what you mean there, but if you are merely saying you like when companies give free stuff as a promotion or just as a Thank You to loyal gamers, then yea, that is cool.
Giving Portal away as Valve did recently guaranteed a lot of exposure to the game, garnering interest in the upcoming sequel to the game. More interest means more sales. That's forward thinking.
Steam does have certain frustrations to it, but you do have the choice to actually prevent updates being done if you are on a roll with a game and downloads for you are turtle slow. Then you can allow updates and let Steam run when you go to work, bed, or school. Keep in mind also games won't update while you are playing, so you won't get interrupted by Steam begging to update.
But another thing to keep in mind, is if you don't update your game, like TF2, Left 4 Dead, or other multiplayer games that you may have on Steam, then you won't be able to play it online with others who have updated, or at least not have it run very well.
But all things aside, Michael Pachter is a blowhard who merely wants to say what is on his mind, and seems to enjoy when people want to object. Sounds like someone else who many Escapists have taken an issue to in the past. A certain Jack Thompson.
The best thing, and I know I failed here in doing it myself, is to just ignore them. They are merely trolls. No threat to us. Jack proved that when he argued himself out of his high-paying job.

 

[Luke Cartner]

When I worked at Sun (the computer company not the paper) we had a term of attitudes such as Pachter's.
Sales prevention.

 

[Andy Chalk]

So you may think. But I don't think depriving people of their livelihood will ever be "right" in any advanced civilization.

And of course it's his opinion. I'm saying his opinion was correct. Game publishers have a right to use whatever DRM system they want (within the confines of the law) to protect their software. Is it right? Not necessarily. But it is most definitely their right.

Your right is to buy it, or not. That's where it stops. But the perceived "right" to "try before you buy" or whatever other bullshit excuses help people sleep at night are not at all rights. They're excuses and rationalizations. But people won't let them go because, as we can very easily see, they think they're right.

As long as that attitude remains common, nothing will change. The situation will get worse, PC gaming will be reduced to a rump of MMOGs and casual titles, and people will continue to whine about it. It's a terrible mess.

But thinking that game publishers don't have the right to protect their software, for good or ill, because it inconveniences your god-given right to play videogames is just foolish.

 

[Dastardly]

Have you ever read an article in a newspaper or a magazine without having paid for it? If you have you have broken the law by your very strict definition of what theft is. Someone you know might have bought the newspaper, but you have consumed the data on the page without the writer being compensated, if I caught you doing it and called you out on it...you'd accuse me of being ridiculous, because in this instance we only see the physical product as being valuable. Which is somewhat of a double standard.

It's principly the same as buying a game and then copying it(or even just installing it on another machine) so your brother or friend can play it too, but that is illegal, industry destroying behaviour that the newspaper industry(which is dying, not flourishing like the gaming industry)apparently has no case to complain about.

As a professional musician AND music teacher, I can see exactly where you're wrong. It's not your fault, it just comes from (probably) not working in a field where you encounter these types of fair-use laws. I'll give you examples here:

If I buy a piece of written music for myself to perform, I can perform it as many times as I want from that copy. I can perform it anywhere I want from that copy. Depending on laws where you are, I can even make on "archival" copy as a backup in case the first is destroyed--as long as both copies are not in use at the same time. I'm NOT permitted to copy the piece for my friends, nor am I permitted to lend that copy to someone else.

The problem for the publisher, however, is one of enforcement. How can they know? Music (like newspapers) doesn't come with "cd keys" or other such electronic means of tracking who buys and who uses a piece of music. That doesn't mean it's legal, just that it's easily possible.

If I buy a piece of written music for my class (consisting of one score and dozens of parts), I can perform it as many times as I want from those copies. Most publishers are okay with making "rehearsal copies" to preserve the originals (mostly for those of us working with kids). What I cannot do is copy that music for a colleague, or let my students keep those rehearsal copies, or loan the whole bit out to some other band.

Again, it's about enforcement. If I'm not performing in high-profile venues, how is the publisher going to know? If they did find out, they COULD sue me (or the school). I wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Now, in BOTH cases, if I lose parts of the music, they're gone. I'm not entitled to have them replaced. My ability to perform the piece at will only lasts as long as the physical copy remains intact. Think of it like getting a few free performances, but then I have to buy replacement parts to continue using it--or buy another copy entirely, if replacements aren't available.

Video games have the advantage of being electronic, and thus being internet-traceable to some degree. CD-Keys, online registration, all of that stuff was created so the company would get a notice each time the game was installed (or some limited guarantee that it wouldn't be installed multiple times from the same copy).

The whole idea of "3 installations and you're out" is severely limiting, but it's not unprecedented. If I buy a magazine and a cloudburst sends it into a sewer in a soggy heap, I can't write the company to get another for free. If something wipes the game from my system, it's not much different.

So everything you're saying is just a shade wrong here. People might call it ridiculous to get on someone for loaning a newspaper to a friend, but not because it's actually ridiculous. The law is very clear on that, but it's just so difficult to enforce in cases like this that people would have to go to SEEMINGLY ridiculous measures to prove it.

Video game companies are ahead of the curve on enforcement, and that's all that's different.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Have you ever read an article in a newspaper or a magazine without having paid for it? If you have you have broken the law by your very strict definition of what theft is. Someone you know might have bought the newspaper, but you have consumed the data on the page without the writer being compensated, if I caught you doing it and called you out on it...you'd accuse me of being ridiculous, because in this instance we only see the physical product as being valuable. Which is somewhat of a double standard.

It's principly the same as buying a game and then copying it(or even just installing it on another machine) so your brother or friend can play it too, but that is illegal, industry destroying behaviour that the newspaper industry(which is dying, not flourishing like the gaming industry)apparently has no case to complain about.

As a professional musician AND music teacher, I can see exactly where you're wrong. It's not your fault, it just comes from (probably) not working in a field where you encounter these types of fair-use laws. I'll give you examples here:

If I buy a piece of written music for myself to perform, I can perform it as many times as I want from that copy. I can perform it anywhere I want from that copy. Depending on laws where you are, I can even make on "archival" copy as a backup in case the first is destroyed--as long as both copies are not in use at the same time. I'm NOT permitted to copy the piece for my friends, nor am I permitted to lend that copy to someone else.

The problem for the publisher, however, is one of enforcement. How can they know? Music (like newspapers) doesn't come with "cd keys" or other such electronic means of tracking who buys and who uses a piece of music. That doesn't mean it's legal, just that it's easily possible.

If I buy a piece of written music for my class (consisting of one score and dozens of parts), I can perform it as many times as I want from those copies. Most publishers are okay with making "rehearsal copies" to preserve the originals (mostly for those of us working with kids). What I cannot do is copy that music for a colleague, or let my students keep those rehearsal copies, or loan the whole bit out to some other band.

Again, it's about enforcement. If I'm not performing in high-profile venues, how is the publisher going to know? If they did find out, they COULD sue me (or the school). I wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Now, in BOTH cases, if I lose parts of the music, they're gone. I'm not entitled to have them replaced. My ability to perform the piece at will only lasts as long as the physical copy remains intact. Think of it like getting a few free performances, but then I have to buy replacement parts to continue using it--or buy another copy entirely, if replacements aren't available.

Video games have the advantage of being electronic, and thus being internet-traceable to some degree. CD-Keys, online registration, all of that stuff was created so the company would get a notice each time the game was installed (or some limited guarantee that it wouldn't be installed multiple times from the same copy).

The whole idea of "3 installations and you're out" is severely limiting, but it's not unprecedented. If I buy a magazine and a cloudburst sends it into a sewer in a soggy heap, I can't write the company to get another for free. If something wipes the game from my system, it's not much different.

So everything you're saying is just a shade wrong here. People might call it ridiculous to get on someone for loaning a newspaper to a friend, but not because it's actually ridiculous. The law is very clear on that, but it's just so difficult to enforce in cases like this that people would have to go to SEEMINGLY ridiculous measures to prove it.

Video game companies are ahead of the curve on enforcement, and that's all that's different.

I appreciate the time and effort that must have gone into that post! Thank you.

But my issue isn't really in not knowing the law and the advantages that the gaming industry has in potentially enforcing it...I just don't agree with the law, and I think that DRM practices are unethical and shady as all hell.

My hard(and legitimate)copy of Bioshock is close to becoming a lemon because of the install limit and system failings, I don't accept your magazine analogy...I really don't think it's the same, my disc works for a start so it should still be a usable product, it's like losing the right to read your magazine because you bent the corners of a few pages, you screwed up but it's yours to screw up, they are not going to ban you from reading Radio Times because you spilled spaghetti sauce on Eamonn Holmes face.

That to me is the most salient point. Once you have sold something, you have relinquished control of it, that's how it is for basically all consumer products, but apparently not for gaming...and is that because it's right or because we are wrongly allowing the gaming industry to make up the terms of ownership to suit themselves?

There were plenty of instances of people being wrongly locked out of games due to DRM. Illegal serial key generators work on the same algorythm that is used to create the keys in the first place, so they can quite easily spit out somebody elses legitimately obtained key.

In my opinion, if they lock you out of your game, they have stolen from you, and that is unethical and "people who steal should be locked up".

 

[Dastardly]

Panda:

I see--I thought your argument was that, from a legal standpoint, there was no difference between the two. That was what I wanted to clear up. Now, if it's a question of personal values and feelings, I still think there are a few things we could look at differently.

... I don't accept your magazine analogy...I really don't think it's the same, my disc works for a start so it should still be a usable product, it's like losing the right to read your magazine because you bent the corners of a few pages, you screwed up but it's yours to screw up,...

The tricky thing here is deciding whether you're buying the DISK or buying the SOFTWARE. Legally, the whole idea of "intellectual property" still hasn't completely settled to everyone's satisfaction on matters like this, but outside the legal sphere you still have to look at what's going on for both sides.

You paid for one copy of the game. So, for that disk, only one copy should exist at a time. And really that means you're only entitled to one shot. It's like buying a model kit--you get enough supplies to try it once, but if you mess something up, that's it. You buy a new kit or request a replacement part. If the company decides, instead, to give you 3 copies of each part, there's your spares. It might not be enough for our tastes, but what they're doing isn't morally wrong. They're protecting themselves, however heavy-handed the effort may be.

That to me is the most salient point. Once you have sold something, you have relinquished control of it, that's how it is for basically all consumer products, but apparently not for gaming...and is that because it's right or because we are wrongly allowing the gaming industry to make up the terms of ownership to suit themselves?

You're right, this is the most salient point of the whole argument. Do you really relinquish ALL control of something once you sell it? If that were true, it would be perfectly acceptable for me to photocopy a magazine and distribute it myself as my own work--after all, it's not MY magazine, and everything in it... right?

Software itself is not a physical product. The disk is physical, and they have no further control over it once it leaves... but the software represents intellectual property, to which the originator retains some rights (see "All Rights Reserved" notices). Essentially, you AREN'T buying the game. You're licensing it. Otherwise, plagiarism is just fine as long as you paid for the book you're plagiarizing--after all, you own the book AND the information it contains.

It's about perspective. If I buy a hammer (a purely physical good), it's mine. No one can tell me what to do or what not to do with it. Of course, I also can't photocopy and distribute a hammer and little or no cost to myself.

Literature, music, and software are not purely physical goods. But because we, as consumers, experience the sale as "Give money, get disk/book/box," we (out of habit) conceptualize the product as a physical good. But what we're getting is not just the disk, book, or box, and that's not what we went to the store to come home with. We bought what's ON or IN it.

And what's on or in the box/disk cost money to make. It is the sum of financial and creative expenditures on the part of its creators. The unfortunate thing for them is that other people can copy and distribute that work at little or not cost to themselves. That wouldn't be fair at all. It's why the concept of copyright (and even patent and trademark) was created (long before video games)--to protect the creators of non-physical properties.

Try to understand their side, too--if they give up ALL control of the product once it's out there, the only way they could guarantee even a "break even" on the cost of production would be to sell that first copy for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead of doing that, they take steps to ensure that it's at least harder to copy their work.

Maybe the steps being taken aren't the best (I think only 3 installs is pretty limiting, too), but what they're doing is like trying to catch light in a jar--they've got to experiment with different kinds of containers until they find one that works.

Overall, I've found that the feeling of being "stolen from" by restrictive copy protection is really just the product of a misunderstanding on exactly what it is we're buying when we put that box on the counter.

 

[Xanthious]

I totally get these publishers don't want their games getting downloaded and copied and what not. However, anymore when it comes to companies like EA, and Ubisoft, and the issue of piracy I just see one group of thieves against another. The difference being one group happens to have the law on their side. It warmed my heart to see Ubisoft's offensively bad DRM get cracked. When EA was crying about Spore getting pirated to the moon after the shit they pulled I had a good laugh at their expense.

These companies anymore are all about squeezing you for as much of your money as they can and giving you as little as humanly possible. The pirates do the same thing to them in return. They take as much as they can and give as little as humanly possible in return. The publishers hide behind install limits, DRM, and DLC to mask the fact they are stealing your money. However, the pirates at least have the balls to be up front about what they do.

I think the next time one of these executives comes out whining about piracy and asking folks to stop ripping them off someone might suggest the same to them. How about they stop limiting the number of installs we can make. How about they include ALL the content in their games and don't intentionally hold back content to sell at a later date. How about they let us play our single player games w/o being needlessly connected to the internet. I say as long as they keep doing things like that I just mentioned every single illegal download is nothing less than they deserve.

 

[Dastardly]

No one listens to a thief when they argue about principles. And, since none of these software companies force you to buy their products, they're not thieves. You may feel you're not getting your money's worth, but that's separate from outright theft.

This is similar to the folks lobbying for the legalization of marijuana. They occasionally raise some very, very good points... but it all falls of deaf ears when they fall back into the "stoner" stereotypes and argue the wrong points.

If you want to change DRM, speak with your dollars and then speak with your mouth. This isn't an issue of human rights, where people would understand a bit of "civil disobedience." This is greedy people that want a game for free, complaining about how evil the publisher is for not giving it away. And then everyone else gets caught in the middle.

Someone has to start the cease-fire, and it should by rights be the ones who shot first (the pirates). If they'd take off the damn eyepatch, and maybe people could take them seriously when they argue about principles.

 

[Acalla]

I think it's sad when companies go bust, but my thinking is really that it's just too bad. I don't think we should allow industry insiders to tell us how we should feel about the issue, because there is such a ridiculously obvious bias there.

I just responded to someone else, I gave the newspaper industry as an example. If they were claiming that anyone who reads their newspaper without paying(your friend might hand it to you, you might find it lying around...whatever)is a thief and should be locked up. They would be laughed at, even though they would have a valid claim too as something has been consumed without the creators seeing any money. It's worth pointing out that the newspaper industry is dying whilst gaming is flourishing everywhere other than the PC platform, which is still making money...just less.

Alright, I see where you are going. While the creators don't like it when we buy used games, that is a perfectly legal thing to do and yes, they don't see any money for it. But you are still purchasing something from someone that was already paid for. Going back to the physical vs non-physical example, if I made 1 million DVDs and sold them, I will have gotta paid for them. Even if someone sold them or gave a DVD to their friend, I still made money from that copy. If someone took one of those DVDs and made digital copies and sent them out to 1 million more people, then that is 2 million copies of my DVD out there but only 1 million sold. Someone could argue that I already got the money coming to me from the 1 million that I sold, but that argument punishes success. And like it or not for the industry to tell us this, it is illegal according to the law (at least in the US).

I'm not comfortable with letting the industry make up the rules as it goes along, it sets a nasty precedent where the consumer is obviously going to lose.

Now with that said, I will give you the fact that the DRM "solution" that Ubisoft has made does make it difficult or impossible to re-sell the game disc that I have purchased and that, in my view, is wrong for the consumer. And so, as a consumer, I have the right to not purchase from that publisher no matter how much I want to play game X. And they have the right to run with that DRM "solution". And hopefully if enough of us decide to not buy from them, they either A) go out of business due to a poor business plan or B) decide to treat their customers better. No where is there a right to play that game.

But I really hope "B" happens because I really want to play AC2. As it is, I probably will eventually pick it up used for a console. But Ubisoft is not getting any of my money until they change their perfectly-in-their-right-but-wrong-for-the-customer-imo DRM.

 

[Tarrou]

To put this simply, there are rights and there is good customer/producer relations

The pirates have neither, and Ubisoft only has one, the legal and moral "right".

They're still fucking their customer base (that would be me, and people like me), and for every game that someone bought because it took the Warez guys too long to get a good crack distributed, there's a guy like me, who didn't play AC2, even though he really liked the idea of the game and would have happily paid for it, if Ubi didn't treat its customers with such disrespect. And all the other games they'll produce that I won't buy between now and whenever (if ever) they redeem themselves.

 

[Therumancer]

That's functionally what the gaming industry is trying to do, and there are laws in place specifically to prevent that kind of thing.

Well, not exactly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD,_Inc._v._Zeidenberg [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD,_Inc._v._Zeidenberg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Harmony_Comps._%26_Elecs.,_Inc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Harmony_Comps._%26_Elecs.,_Inc.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Cartridge_Remanufacturers_Association_Inc._v._Lexmark_International_Inc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Cartridge_Remanufacturers_Association_Inc._v._Lexmark_International_Inc.]

http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd [http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd]

I agree with you, I think, in that DRM in videogames, and copyright in the digital world in general, is a horribly broken, dysfunctional mess. But as long as both sides approach the issue with iron-clad certainty that they're right and the other guys are wrong, things aren't likely to change. If anything, they're going to get worse.

Piracy is not acceptable. Neither is balls-to-the-wall, good-luck-with-this-shit DRM.

So, publishers can implement shitty copy protection, and customers can refuse to buy their games. If we're serious about coming up with fair, workable solutions, that needs to be the starting point. But if all we really want is free games, well, that's a whole 'nother matter entirely and not one that the pirates are likely to be very inclined to "solve."

Okay, I did some very basic research and inquired with a couple of people I knew. I know others in this thread have mentioned cases where the EULA was shot down, however for whatever reason doing searches I have personally been unable to find many examples directly involving game software. I will however point out that in most of the cases you quoted there were other factors involved that probably lead to the ruling in addition to the EULA. Also in your first link it DOES mention that a big part of the ruling was the abillity to return the software in question. In the case of most video game software you can't return it due to store policy, thus I think that ruling would have gone the other way if it involved a game currently.

That said, during my inquiries it turns out that I am pretty much correct about the legality of this. However so far nobody has challenged this on the grounds that I have mentioned. In none of the cases you mentioned did anyone raise the issue of money being accepted before the contract. Or at least none that I have noticed.

At any rate, perhaps some of the other users that were agreeing with me, and mentioned EULAs being shot down on specific points could point out some of the cases they know, since I'm pretty sure I've heard of them myself but can't find any of them with a search.

So for the most part in this case I *DO* have to concede your correct in this case, since I can't (at the moment) challenge it.

At any rate I don't play to buy any Ubisoft games as long as they keep this DRM the way it is.

 

[incal11]

Piracy is not just civil disobedience, it is the poor's right to fight for Freedom, and defend their money from the prying hands of the powerfuls dominating the unforgiving jungle that is our "advanced" "civilisation" (I don't speak for the cheap bastards though).
In general we (as in a large part of humanity) want some fun before we die, and we'll spit on all maners of morality if we have to.
How much fun is enough depends on the person.

That may be what some think of falling into the "stoner sereotype" but from a purely objectivist (or nihilistic if you prefer) point of view that's how it is, and it is the real source of "piracy".

I, for one, do put my money where my mouth is.

 

[Dastardly]

See what I mean?

Some (many) people out there are just fundamentally incapable of separating "I want" from "I have a right" or "This is morally right."

You want the game. It's not a need by any stretch of the imagination, nor it is an entitlement by the same standard. You want it. You do not, however, want to pay for it--for whatever reason. It's not about not wanting to support that company, because you could do that WITHOUT pirating the game by just NOT BUYING the game.

It's about want. You don't want them to have your money, BUT you still want to have the game. And that's all there is to it. There's no moral undertone, no crusade, no "fight for freedom." There is "want - take."

Realize, as a human being, that you can WANT something that is WRONG. You can really, really, really want it, even--but that doesn't change whether or not it is wrong. You can NEED it, and still there's no change. I've shoplifted before. Did I return it? No. Did I feel particularly guilty? No. But did I in any way ever defend my decision to do so? Nope. I stole it because I wanted it and just couldn't be bothered to pay for it at that point in time.

To go to a popular example, though, "Would you steal to feed your starving family?" In a second, without pause, yes. I would. "Is it WRONG to steal to feed your starving family?" Yes, it is. I am taking something for which I have not worked or paid, and I'm taking it from someone else who's rightful property it is. You can couch the issue in all the "extenuating circumstances" you want, but I stole it and that is wrong. And I would still do it, because better him than me.

So just quit trying to defend piracy. Just cop to it--"Want. Take." Don't try to disguise the greed in some superhero tights.

 

[lijenstina]

I wonder why those pesky lawmakers and law professors came up with term of copyright infringement when they could call it simply stealing? It's not stealing it's piracy. When you say that it's enough to know the exact moral, legal, cultural and other implications of that deed.

It's like calling a car - a bicycle.

On the other side, technically he is right about Ubisoft: they can take a dump on a DVD case and sell it as a copy protection. However, people also have the right to complain about the smell.
And ethics and lawyers I wouldn't go in there.

 

[Dastardly]

Stealing is a broad category of other acts. In most countries, someone won't be charged with "stealing." Trying to argue this on definition is a losing battle.

Larceny isn't stealing--it's larceny. Theft isn't stealing--it's theft. All the different ways people obtain property to which they are not legally entitled, or that is someone else is specifically entitled to, are "stealing." Everything else is just legal finagling to pin down what was stolen and how, as different laws govern different kinds of stealing.

Copyright/trademark infringement or patent violations are all different ways of receiving an item, credit for an item, or the due consequences of the use of an item without permission or entitlement. That is stealing something. People "poo poo" it because you're not stealing a physical good.

Being of a lower severity of stealing doesn't mean it's not stealing. It clearly is by any sane definition of stealing. Calling it stealing is like calling both a car and a bike "Vehicles," which they both definitely are.