I've been getting a lot of email since the announcement of the Gamers Bill of Rights -- quite a bit from game developers who make the argument that it's easy to throw stones at what other people but what solution do we suggest for them?
For example, one of the things I've seen is that Stardock is "anti-DRM" in all cases. This isn't true. WindowBlinds, for example, requires activation. In fact, nearly all our software requires activation. Yet, you rarely if ever see anyone complain about it. Why is that? Because our activation is largely invisible, most people aren't aware of it. The beta of Demigod has activation in it too. Yet, it too is invisible to the user.
So clearly, activation, unto itself, isn't necessarily a problem. Yet clearly with Spore, people had a big problem with it. What's the difference? The difference in my opinion is the arbitrary limitations set ("3 activations" for instance). Or more generally, anything that materially interferes with a legitimate customer's ability to use their game.
So those people who were so unhappy with Spore's activation, I'd be curious to hear what specifically bothered them? What was it about Spore that causes such an uproar versus things done in the past?
Here are things that annoy me about various types of copy protection:
My tolerance may be higher than others, hence why I'd like to try to understand what caused the Spore backlash.
As others know, our games ship with no CD copy protection at all since not all users have Internet access but we require users to download our free updates from us so that we know (to a high degree) that only legitimate customers are getting our free updates. And even with that laid back system, some people still object. So we'd like to get an idea of what invisible threshold you think Spore crossed that made so many people upset.
That's a strange thing to enact and enforce. Which organization is enforcing this? The UN? This does indeed sound like something I would be against. It's silly to ask other countries to pay for oil in somebody else's currency.
Some have referred to those who manipulate and conspire to control such things - most likely as accurately as one can - as cartels. They are a cooperative of interests whose ends are served by coordinated action. Its not necessarily a circumstance where one has formal domain, because (for one thing) if you establish a formal domain, your activities are easier to track, your identity & agenda are more obvious.
If one wanted to zero-in on specific entities for the Oil circumstance, I would theorize that The World Bank and The Federal Reserve can thwart purchases if they are not in the desired currency... most international country-level banking is done via credit transfer, not hard cash. Ergo, if a bank refuses the transaction, your deal is dead in the water.
WIllythemailboy:
Absolutely. I was proposing that they further drop the pricing on the base DL game because I believe that if they cater to an international market, and they do, then there is a secondary market for significantly cheaper games in the developing world. $20 for the base DL game is more or less okay in the Philippines. We're not that badly off. Then again, the piracy penetration here isn't as good as mainland Asia. I think that a significant number of Singaporeans and Thais would purchase an original copy of the game online just so they have one, even with pirated copies in the drive.
Furthermore, newcomers attracted by the bargain basement pricing would be more enticed to try out ToA and DA, which translates into strong marketing as well for those releases. I believe that we're beginning to be at the point where DL sales are petering out because most of the people who want one already have one, and people who are still looking to get into it would prefer to get the entire bundle at once.
CobraA1:
Who is enforcing the petro-dollar scheme?
Mostly the US governments and financial movers, of course. The OPEC, particularly Saudi Arabia and Dubai are "highly encouraged" by the US, through diplomatic, financial, and sometimes outright military persuasions not to deal in any currency other than the dollar. There has been rampant speculation that the real reason Iraq was invaded was because Saddam was contemplating dealing in rubles, and that puts a significant damper on the petro-dollar trade scheme. Of course, it's all just speculation, but the circumstances surrounding the invasion are conducive to such speculation.
What about your education?
If you're educated in the US, you're a peon, pure and simple. Get your shackles off. Look for news and differeing POVs on various issues. Do not allow yourself to be fed information only by your own news agencies or the agencies of your allies. If you can, get news firsthand from verifiable facts, or secondhand from an unbiased observer, or at least an observer who has interests in remaining unbiased.
The fact that the US does not emphasize the Philippines in its education is part of the way in which your system indoctrinates you. As many knowledgeable American historians will tell you, the Philippines is an important part of American history outside its borders, because it is the first instance in which the US used military force to invade and take over a country that did not want its rule. It's a lot more sordid than that, of course, which is why few Americans like to teach it - it's a dark decade in American history. This part of American history would rightly make many Americans hang their heads in shame.
Not that shameful histories are anything unique.
About Tydings-Mcduffie:
Regardless of when you were born, your history should interest you because the events of today are rooted in the events of yesterday. Tydings-Mcduffie placed the foundations of economic relations and arrangements that have often proved to be exploitative of the Philippines to a greater or lesser degree. It also answers the question of why the Philippines is not a 2nd Japan, where the US really could use another such ally in the East.
Regarding piracy and international law:
The US and American publishers like Stardock would have a lot more moral authority to complain and pursue piracy in other countries if they were otherwise scrupulous about observing intellectual property laws and such. The fact that the West celebrates its industrial espionage operations in the East as heroic legends and actions REALLY doesn't help.
If I am to place blame, I prefer it to be on a specific group of individuals rather than some vague entity. You can't influence a vague entity, but you can influence a specific group of individuals with the right resources.
I'm not terribly fond of the vague "us" versus "them" mentality of conspiracy theorists. I prefer to keep my groupings clear and distinct.
Well, our own country had natives in it when we first established it, and I do believe we obtained slaves from Africa at one time.
. . . and if my research is correct, that was a long time ago, as part of the Spanish-American war, which is in our history books, but largely overshadowed by the Civil War and the World Wars. I'm pretty sure that taking over the Philippines was mentioned, but not emphasized.
In any case, I suppose the more important question is what do we do now? We can't change history. We can only take action in the present.
I don't remember that in my history lessons .
The best form of copy protection is Balance, if i felt i was getting a fair product for a fair price, i would buy it, in fact this is the Philosophy that i adopt in all my purchase decisions, there you go, it's not rocket science, you are either to dumb to understand it or you arn't.
long live common sence!!
When you buy a book you are buying a license. You don't own the contents of the book, just the physical manifestation of it.
When you buy a game, you own the physical manifestation of the game too - the box, manual, CDs, etc. But you don't own the contents.
When you buy a music album...same thing.
You do own a book when you buy it. What you don't own are copyrights.
Copyright is a way to avoid this licensing idiocy the software industry has impaled itself on, not an excuse for it.
Frogboy:
I think psychoak is correct here. When I purchase a book I'm free to do with it as I wish except for selling its contents or copies of its contents for profit, or else copying it and distributing it indiscriminately, which is also covered by copyright law. A book isn't a license.
The book doesn't limit my ability to read other books, nor does it wreck the photocopier I use to make as many copies of it as I deem necessary for strict personal consumption. As long as I don't publish or distribute such copies beyond copyright law, I can do that.
I can write a report on it, quote stuff from it in small snippets, refer to it, and in general talk about its contents freely. When I purchase a music CD, I am also free to make copies of it as is legal under copyright law. This cannot be for mass distribution and there are specific instances of breach of copyright, but for the most part, the music doesn't kill my mp3 players when I try to copy it for my personal usages.
In the same manner, when I purchase a car, I do not own the technology that could be construed as the intellectual property content of the car. I can otherwise do it with as I wish.
People expect to have that kind of control over games they supposedly own. I don't want a vaguely defined legalese license, goddamit. I want your game.
You could read up more on the conduct of your government, stay informed, and have an independent opinion from news you gather yourself from a wide variety of sources. Americans always say that they didn't expect their government to hoodwink them over the Iraq invasion, but it had precedent - the US also did the same whitewash job on the Philippine invasion. It still does.
The Philippine-American War is not the same as the Spanish-American War, although the two are related. American history books prefer to refer to it as the "Philippine Insurrection" to imply that the US was the legitimate governing body of the islands at the period, but it's a con job much like how Japan purposefully ignores the organized serial rapes and sexual slavery of thousands of women in their occupied territories during WW2.
As for industrial espionage, the theft of silk, tea, and porcelain, among other things, are generally celebrated as great heroic tales in the West. Look it up. For that matter, Americans generally have no compunctions about stealing the ideas of third world citizens and patenting them at home when they return, seeing it as a genuine and original "discovery." Many names in Western biology were made by the discovery of species that people have long known to have existed - just not in the West.
As with so many important, interesting questions, the situation here is "both yes and no." From a software person's POV, the core problem is that it is a severe anachronism to say something like "buying a book is buying a license." It just isn't so, and scholarship as we know it could well fall apart if such a notion were taken to its logical extensions. The products are fundamentally different because a book is a discrete, lendable, re-sellable package while software is a big fuzzy mess of bits with the potential to cheaply replicate itself to nearly every computer on the planet.
When copyright was invented, owning a printing press meant you were a player of some sort, at the very least a low-ranking chamber of commerce type. The earliest English laws I know about in this area were actually licenses to even own and use one of the darned things. Monarchs understood printing's propaganda power well before entrepreneurs came up with the notion of a government scheme to control who could print what for the market. Now we live in a world with hundreds of millions of machines that would have made Ben Franklin, the wealthy printer, drool shamelessly in the public square--as long as just a few of them were available, to "the right sort of people." (He was a real snob for a lowborn, that guy.)
It's not an apples-and-starfish kind of thing, but it is definitely apples-and-oranges; both books and software distribution packages are in part the fruit of intellectual labor, but they are very different members of a very large category.
Been a long time since I've taken a history class. I dunno if our current books really use that wording or not.
I'm not really a history buff. I prefer programming, math, and science. My shelves are pretty much lined with programming, software engineering, and other stuff like that.
So basically I only have your word. I don't have much to check your claims with.
The best form of copyright protection would be the one you couldn't tell was even there.
To bad that when you make a better lock, someone makes a better lockpick.
It's obvious that the Spore backlash was due to one thing: Activation Limits
EA Claims that less than 1% re-install their games, or install on multiple computers. I don't believe this for a minute. First of all, how many years of data do they have on this? Most re-installs would happen months or years after the initial purchase (when you get a new computer, or format your hard drive, etc). I can't count how many times I've installed Diablo 2, Starcraft, Half-life, Quake, etc.
While providing a way to de-activate an installation is a step in the right direction, I think it could end up being a nightmare - I personally have dozens of games on my PC and I'm about format my hard drive. Now what if all those games had activation limits? It would mean I'd have to spend forever figuring out each games deactivation process, etc -- what a pain! Some of the games I have installed are made by publishers that no longer exist...what then?
Everyone knows that Spore was pirated before the game hit retail, as are most games. EA must know this as well, which means that activation limits have nothing to do with pirates (pirates were the only ones not affected). The only possible reason then must be to limit your rights as a consumer to re-sell the game. What other reason could there be? I'm willing to be that some lawyer somewhere will be able to make the case that this infringes on some basic consumer rights.
This whole DRM thing smacks of one thing to me, vigilantism.
Companies are now trying to define their own copyright law and force users to accept them (EULA). Copyright enforcement is the responsibility of governement in each country said work is published in. Yet you find publishers trying to define their own international domain.
As far as I'm concerned, EULA's are not valid as it is accepted at gun point (not literal, but taking money and then imposing rules after sale or your out of your money is the equivalent of robbery/duress). DRM is the attempt to enforce these rules that often violate local and international law.
Another name for it is gangsterism.
As for an acceptable DRM, online activation (no limits except possibly a number over time one [3/month?]) is not perfect in that anyone without internet access is still totally out of luck. My personal view is that a hybrid Disk/online one would be best.
1. Disc based authentification for those with no/intermittent internet access (or the company folds/servers no longer supported) and
2. Online registration with redownload/patch/no disc required/updates (a la stardock)
What publishers should be doing is stopping casual piracy. Professional piracy is the domain of law enforcement.
edit: corrected typo's
The whole idea that there should be limits on activation is just stupid anyways. I mean, really, how is it stopping any pirates?
Truth is, it's not. It's just another thing to frustrate legitimate users. They shouldn't be trying to "improve" time limited forms of activation, they should just be making activation a one time deal and check the activation when you download updates. There is no reason to add a time limit or anything like that to it.
I agree that limits at all is a bad idea. But if they insist on it, at least a cycling one is better than the current regime.
The net effect of it though for myself, is that I am buying a lot less games now. EA and anything using Securom is now an automatic no-buy. Shame too as I was looking forward to many games like Sacred2,Dragon-Age, Dead space, etc. Not to mention any impulsive purchases are now out of the question.
I'm quite late arriving to this thread but I'd like to comment none the less.
I am decidedly pro-consumer. As a consumer it would be insane not to be. Here are my thoughts on copy protection and the user-publisher relationship in general:
1. A real disk inserted into the tray for installation is ok. The disk should NEVER be required again except for a non-network based re-installation. Imagine if XP or Vista required a disk in the tray to run.
2. One time entering of a CD key at installation is ok. I would prefer the CD key to be attached to the disk label since some folks have trouble keeping manuals or boxes. There should NEVER be any electronic finger printing of my computer hardware tied to the CD key. Installation should NEVER be limited to a fixed number or a specific machine. Actual playing of the game MAY be limited to an arbitrary fixed number of machines concurrently (typically 1) for the purposes of internet based play. Offline and lan based play should NEVER limit the number of machines playing. Let's be brutally honest, online (via internet) is the driving force for games. No one cares how many people beat the single player campaign.
3. Creation of a user account connected with a CD key for internet based play and patch download is ok. The only information I should have to provide are a screen name, a valid email, and a password. The user account should NEVER be required for offline play or lan based play since a lan may not be internet equipped. That is, the game still works EVEN IF an account is NEVER created. The functionality is just REDUCED to offline and lan play.
4. Malware drivers for authentication (a la Securom or Starforce) must NEVER be installed. They must NEVER take the place of or run in conjunction with my existing system drivers. They must NEVER reconfigure my system in any way. They must NEVER change the functionality, security, or contents of my computer from before installation.
5. Planned allowances for legacy software are a must. A game must NEVER cease to function partially or in whole (with the exception of server based games like MMOs or portions of games using the same model) as a result of age or obsolescence. You MUST make allowances so that the software will operate fully in 5, 10, 100, or 1000 years. This ultimately means that all online authentication activities MUST be removed as software goes unsupported. Failure to do this demonstrates definitive hatred of your customers.
6. Latitude for resale is a must. You MUST design your software with the understanding users do, in fact, own something. This is instantiated in law (at least in the US) as original and successive sales. Only the ORIGINAL sale is governed by you. All successive sales MUST be unfettered and UNRELATED to you. Games MUST work for their new second hand, third hand, thirty-seventh hand owners. Failure to do this demonstrates definitive hatred of your customers.
7. Trust. You must treat me as a friend and not as an oil field ready to have its monetary goodness sucked out. Trust is shown by not looking over customer's shoulders. If you honestly believe I'm going to betray your trust and give your software to 100000 of my closest friends DON'T sell the software at all. You are far TOO PARANOID for your own good or my own good.
8. An EULA should state in a maximum of 500 words of plain english the agreement between consumer and company.
9. Any consumer who declines to enter into the agreement with the company MUST be allowed to return the disk, in like new condition, for a full refund within say two days of purchase. (This assumes installation was never completed. Enforcing this would be difficult. Perhaps the EULA should be readable without opening the box or, for that matter, without purchasing the game)
10. Any consumer who declares the game will not run on their computer MUST be allowed to return the disk, in like new condition, for a partial refund within thirty days of purchase.
How the hell did the Philippine war get into this thread?
While bashing the US for "invading" a country to take it over, try and keep historical accuracy. The Philippines were neither free nor invaded. Spain ruled, was at war with the US, and had already bought your savior off. The US convinced him to return, and then double crossed him in the end when they took the capital themselves so Spain could save face. Considering the guy was a dirt bag himself and gave up his cause for money, double crossed his compatriots, and then double crossed the Spanish on his return, it might even have been prudent to keep the guy out of power.
Yeah, the war sucked, but there was no invasion of a free country on the part of the US.
On the subject of DRM... Online activation should never be required unless I A) want to play multiplayer and it involves logging into game publisher servers or want to download the game again. CD keys work well for this, and note I said game publisher servers, LAN doesn't count, there should never be a need for everyone to have a seperate copy at a lan party . Sins has done great with this aspect, props. Any other DRM is unacceptable, and, quite frankly, pointless. Spore was available in good working order a week before it was released, except it was pirated and DRM-free. There are many working cracks for securom, tages, starforce, the works. The DRM companies claim there aren't any, but they're just lying through thier teeth so that it doesn't look like thier product is comepletely pointless. Hell, the latest version of securom got the shit kicked out of it by an ISO mounting tool a month before it ever made it into production on any CDs.
Pn the topic of secure content delivery.... I hate impulse. I hate any extra software that I have to install to get updates or any other kind of service. The system that was set up at first here, with you logging into your account on the SINS web site, validating your purchase via cd key, and then downloading the patches from a secure web site. Impulse is buggy at best, web sites for something that simple are easy to maintain and you can even have the web site open a slim, simple download/updater client to do the download of the actual patch, saving on company bandwidth. Doing a full suite like impulse is guaranteed to cause issues for a LOT of people, HTML almost always works, and even if it doesn't its usually a 5 minute fix for your support crew talking to the guy.I have issues with impulse not recongizing programs I've registered on it several times already. I registered it once, it was fine. I formatted my PC, installed impulse, logged into my account, bam, gone. Sadly Blizzard has almost the right idea on updating thier software with WoW. Since its an MMO I understand it checking updates right away as soon as you log in. For any game online, it should check updates right away and ask you to install the latest version, but not require it in most cases(with the mmo theres no way to do it but to require it, but thats a different thing from something like sins). First you DL a slim automated bit torrent client, it downloads the patch and automatically opens it and applys it and you don't have to deal with it beyond looking at a progress bar while its doing its job.
With Spore, it's the arbitrary limits on activation that are the problem.
I quite like the Microsoft approach. They check the hardware and you can install an unlimited number of times to the same machine based on the hardware hash. You get three activations on different machines.
Finally, if you do not install for 120 days, the counter is reset to 0. This prevents piracy but hardly anyone has problems unless they install on more than four physically different machines in under 120 days.
Somebody decided that playing the blame game for the copyright and economic woes of other nations was more important than trying to figure out solutions.
CobraA1, the commentary offered by others pertaining to history was pertinent... it sounds like you are being unreasonably critical. Without such discussion, unwarranted sympathies might arise concerning the chief perpetrators of DRM.
Before you adopt a "solution", you first make sure the philosophies behind that solution are valid, lest you simply sow a nonsensical seed for future discord.
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I borrowed Gears Of War from my brother a few days ago. Once you get by the cludgy-feeling interface, it seems fun. But I tell you folks... I HATE having to log-in to WindowsLIVE everytime I play my ***singleplayer offline campaign***. The game won`t let me save progress(!) unless you log in!!! Same as the damn authentication servers of EA`s.
Btw, I am interested enough and entertained enough to play Gears, but not to buy it. The 'borrow from brother' model serves me well enough here.
This turns out not to be the case. Depending on the wording of the EULA, we generally do NOT own the physical manifestations of computer software. Books and CDs do not have (arguably) legal agreements attached to them restricting the licensee from exercising copyright-guarranteed rights as "owner of a copy".
Specifically, if consumers were owners of a copy, you would have no right to restrict resale in any way, including after-market updates. The first sale doctrine addresses this specifically, and EULAs are how software companies bypass that.
Take, for example, the WoW EULA that was the subject of the Game Cheats Are Illegal? thread. Their EULA asserts Blizzard's ownership of EVERYTHING - software, box, manual, artwork, etc. Stardock's EULAs are not quite so all-encompassing, which ironically makes them far easier to evade. Still, the bald statement "The SOFTWARE is not sold, it is licensed." in the Dread Lords EULA could be read both ways - protecting the program or protecting the program and the disc it's on. You should probably consult legal council about this - I know I'd be interested in hearing an actual lawyer's opinions on these things.
First, let's assume these chief perpetrators have names. SecuROM is the most controversial form of DRM.
Second, let's not assume one side's guilt makes the other side totally innocent. Both sides share some blame.
Last, let's figure out where and how we can take action. We can't take action with nebulous entities, and we won't achieve our objectives by making everybody enemies.
Nor do they need to, since they are not classified as "computer programs" and as such do not have the rights given in section 117.
If only things were so simple as subsection (a) of section 109.
Then subsection (b) came along and made everything complicated .
With my spyware, anytime I have to reinstall (hard drive recovery, new computer, ect.) it goes like this.
I submit a request to the support and fill out a verification. Then an email is sent to me with a one time use download link. I download and set up and I'm good to go.
Obviously it is because I am a subscriber to my anti spyware I get the service.
To bad games could not have something similar. I case of some ramdom act of God (Jesus stole my Dell!) I could at least recover the software.
Ofcourse things like that cost money to do, but it could be done like a waranty. You could be gauranteed (x) number of recoveries over the course of (x) number of days. It would be alot nicer form of DRM than limiting the number of activations straight out of the box.
Or they could just drop dead and go to hell and I can go find something else to do besides fuck with a company giving me shit for giving them business.
Historical context is important. Many of the most sophisticated pirates reside in the Philippines and China. These are not two-bit hackers in some basement with a network of computers. They are backed by millions of dollars in illegal sales and have the hardware and software expertise commensurate with that budget.
While I may sound critical of the US, the only real suggestion I made was that US companies ought to mind third world sales markets more in order to squelch potential markets for piracy - that is a sound business plan and a good action plan IMO, for the marginalization of piracy activities.
As for historical context, please view Agoncillo works or if you prefer Henry William Scott works.
psychoak:
You need to review facts as well. Aguinaldo was a scumbag and he did accept the 30 pieces of silver and exile after long years of fighting what must have seemed like a lost cause.
That said, I have no illusions about his nature and that he was any kind of savior. He was just another revolutionary. Of course, he did declare Philippine independence despite all that, and the US did kind of have an agreement with his nascent government-in-exile. Regardless of how much of a scumbag the guy was, it doesn't change the fact that the US invaded a country that had declared itself independent, and into which it had made agreements with.
There is no whitewashing this. It's pure treachery in the name of imperialism.
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