160 replies to this topic

[grannywils]

@DrakeTheDragon, very well said.

[Fatalmasterpiece]

There wouldn't be a PC gaming industry/market without DRM. When was the last time you bought a CD?


I thought about piracy once, but then I took a cigarette to the knee.

.... today? I buy cd/dvd/physical pc games all the time, not sure what your point is. >_>

[jim_uk]

There wouldn't be a PC gaming industry/market without DRM. When was the last time you bought a CD?


I thought about piracy once, but then I took a cigarette to the knee.

That's debatable, DRM doesn't stop piracy so there must be enough honest people out there to keep the platform viable.

[Arthmoor]

Mods are public domain.

Not to inflame an already inflamed issue, but no, mods are NOT Public Domain in the legal sense of the term. Yes, I know what you meant, but "public domain" has a pretty specific meaning, and mods simply don't fit that just because someone uploaded them.

Until this century, copyright infringement != theft, either in law or the public consciousness.

Those big nasty warnings on VHS cassettes back in the 1980s disagree with you. Civil copyright infringement can't result in you going to prison for 10 years. Only criminal copyright infringement can do that, and the concept is indeed based squarely around theft.

There wouldn't be a PC gaming industry/market without DRM. When was the last time you bought a CD?

A CD? Uhmmmmm.... years ago. The last DVD I bought though was the CE of Skyrim. If you mean movies, I buy blue-ray discs all the time. Some say I'm a dinosaur. PC Gaming, however, would have done just fine with less intrusive DRM or no DRM at all.

[myrmaad]

Where do the kids come up with this strange idea that Intellectual Property is not truly property? We had an unban request recently with an entire (though poorly constructed) rationale to explain why he was banned for advocating piracy. I didn't buy his argument but he got credit for attempting a thesis. Anyway, I think it deserves a full debate in the debate section. It's pretty ludicrous to me to think that someone could labor to bring their creativity to fruition and not be entitled to the fruits of that labor.

[Lisnpuppy]

I am with LadyMillia on this one. Intellectual property IS property. Why do you think we have patents on things? To protect the idea of something to an individual. That being said the difficulty lies in the 1) original intent of mods to be shared freely and what it came to mean (to many right or wrong) that all mods were shared 100% free to do whatever. 2) the difficulty in policing the internet where ideas as intellectual property move at the speed of light.

Unfortunately the protections some wish to place to protect their intellectual property directly effects the freedom of sharing of ideas for which the internet is known and loved.

Mods are seen as something to share at their heart and so it is difficult for some to accept the notion that they are intellectual property to be protected and shared as the mod author sees fit. Mainly because there was no financial reward. Once money is tied to the mods then there is seen by many as then something to protect. There is a feeling by many that if a mod author isn't getting paid for it then why do they care.

So does this mean that placing financial gains on the mods (I am not going to go into all intellectual property here) is the best way to protect them as there is a way to measure in some way, the loss of the intellectual property as it relates to the mod author?

[Dark0ne]

I do like this "digital property isn't property" argument. So I write a completely original book that I'd like to sell. I have a few options for publishing.

• I go to a publisher who will make a physical copy of books to sell in stores. They will charge me a considerable sum for this, or take large royalties for the hassle.
• I forego getting a publisher and decide to go it alone by publishing an e-book, and charging for access to the e-book. I do not have to pay royalties but I will not have a physical copy available to sell in stores.
• I do both; I give the publishing rights to my physical book to a publisher while retaining the rights to publish the book online in an e-book format.

In option 1, if someone were to steal my book (by going in to a store and stealing it off the shelf, or off the back of a lorry, etc.) then that would be deemed theft and illegal.

In option 2, people are trying to tell me that because it's not a physical, tangible consumer good then downloading it without paying for it is somehow not the same as theft (and perhaps not even illegal). If you believe that downloading the book without paying for it is not illegal, you are in the wrong. If you're arguing it's not theft but it is illegal then we are just arguing semantics, and you're being a pedant.

[jim_uk]

Games and movies cost millions to make, no one in their right mind would invest that if some other party could come along and start selling copies of the final product.

[myrmaad]

Or giving them away.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Lisnpuppy- You are right, my use of IP above may have been too broad. I think the patent system as originally designed is very good, and strikes a good balance between protecting inventors' ideas and serving the public. Of course it is off the rails now...
What I am really talking about are things like code, or that can be encoded i.e. shared on the internet. If you have a patent for a new design of wheat thresher, I'm not saying someone should be able to come along and manufacture them en masse. But if someone wants to copy your idea in their garage for their own use, they would not be stealing from you either.

Where do the kids -

***INPUT HALTED. SNARK SENSORS HAVE DETECTED UNSAFE CONDESCENSION LEVELS. PLEASE REPHRASE WHEN CONTENTS HAVE RETURNED TO RESPECTFUL TONE***

I do like this "digital property isn't property" argument. So I write a completely original book that I'd like to sell. I have a few options for publishing.

• I go to a publisher who will make a physical copy of books to sell in stores. They will charge me a considerable sum for this, or take large royalties for the hassle.
• I forego getting a publisher and decide to go it alone by publishing an e-book, and charging for access to the e-book. I do not have to pay royalties but I will not have a physical copy available to sell in stores.
• I do both; I give the publishing rights to my physical book to a publisher while retaining the rights to publish the book online in an e-book format.

In option 1, if someone were to steal my book (by going in to a store and stealing it off the shelf, or off the back of a lorry, etc.) then that would be deemed theft and illegal.

In option 2, people are trying to tell me that because it's not a physical, tangible consumer good then downloading it without paying for it is somehow not the same as theft (and perhaps not even illegal). If you believe that downloading the book without paying for it is not illegal, you are in the wrong. If you're arguing it's not theft but it is illegal then we are just arguing semantics, and you're being a pedant.

With a physical book from a bookstore is real property. If I take a book out the back door, the store can no longer sell that book. It is lost money, as if I had taken it out of the register.
If I download the book off some website, no one loses the book. It is not a lost sale, there is no way you can make the case that I would have bought the book if I had not been able to download it.
Option 2 is not theft. It is illegal today, no question about it.

I'm not saying you are doing anything wrong. The environment is the way it is and you gotta do what you gotta do.
I only think that in the misty future, things will go the other way, especially in regard to work for hire.

Or giving them away.

I don't know. This site and community is proof that people will do and create creative things without the prospect of a monetary return on their time investment.

Edited by Quetzlsacatanango, 25 January 2012 - 03:40 PM.