There's no hostility, assuming you read it all, you read the part where it said all previous two year old joking aside, that would mean that when I'm spelling it all out for you like you're a two year old needing it spelled out, I was joking...  Hmmm, never had to explain that I was joking after I clearly stated I was joking before...  First time for everything.  Plus I fully enjoy a spirited debate.  So everyone else not interested, just skip to the next post.

Here's another wall of text.  How exactly?  I assume the point you're referring to is point number 2, which I'm not supporting you with my examples, you need to go back and reread them if you think they are or gain some better understanding of the English language because you're missing something.  You asked how, I gave examples specific to the how's that you provided.  My adding context is because you apparently needed it, you did ask how after all.  Now I'm asking how, so provide context for how my statement invalidates my own position and supports yours.

No, actually I said "It's easy to make a counter statement when you only point out crimes and don't put them into context with a situation."  Once again, you asked how, requesting I give context and meaning to the statement.  I added context to prove to you that there are situations when laws can be broken and you're actually praised for your actions.  Laws in and of themselves are absolutes, and therefor me making an absolute statement about absolutes is perfectly valid.  Go ahead and dispute that.  You'd be wrong, but go ahead and do it anyway.

I gave you a couple of examples specific to your question to prove that every single law has at least one situation where it's okay to do what they claim is illegal.  Situations in which had you followed the law, you got screwed...  From something as trivial as running a red light at 3am on an empty street to something as serious as murder.  All laws do in fact hurt the law abiding.  See, here's the beauty of that absolute statement about an absolute concept.  I only need to give one reason for a law in which it hurts the law abiding and I win.  Here, you want another one, let's do gambling.  Gambling is illegal in most US states.  So doesn't that mean that everyone who buys a lottery ticket, or plays powerball, or buys scratchers is breaking the law?  It sure as hell does, but even though the state says it's illegal, they're the ones hosting the gambling.  So everyone, including every state that says it's illegal just ignores that fact and does it anyway.  Hey that's just great.  How does it hurt the law abiding you ask?  Well, I'm glad you did, because the answer is simple.  Education.  Every state funnels portions of the proceeds and payouts to their respective educational systems.  Still following me?  Good.  Imagine if all of those states actually upheld the law and arrested people who participated in those illegal activities.  Not only would the jails fill up quickly with victimless crime offenders, but our already troubled educational institutions would suck even worse.  You abide by the laws and don't gamble, you're screwing yourself out of a better education.  Of course you could just save up all of that money and buy yourself a better education but that's just crazy talk!

Yeah I just quoted that a second time.  It's such an asinine comment it deserves to be quoted a second time.  More accurate for whom exactly?  You get to decide what is more accurate and thus more correct based on what exactly?  Because you say so?  Here's where I have issue.  You're picking apart things I'm saying so yeah, I'm returning the favor now.  Let's evaluate what you said for a change.  You first acknowledge it's MY OPINION, and then you tell me I need to fashion it in a manner that is more acceptable to you.  No.  Just no.  It's my opinion, not yours.  You don't get to tell me how I should be saying it.  If you don't like it, tough shit, it's not yours to decide how it's said.  You're 38 years old.  One would hope you know this concept already.

Now you're just making shit up to confuse the point.  We're not talking about the lack of laws, we're talking about the fact that there are laws and that those laws hurt the law abiding.  I don't need to define a scenario in which someone is hurt less if there wasn't a law, according to my statement that you've stupidly fixated on, I only need to define a situation where one is hurt by them.  You're absolutely right in that there is no situation that I can think of either where one is hurt less by striking murder laws off the books.  However, I don't need to come up with one to validate my statement.  Fucking sweet right?  I've given more then one example of murder being perfectly acceptable and quite likely necessary.  It may be morally objectionable.  I do happen to find murder morally objectionable, yet I live on earth, not some fantasy land, and I realize that sometimes it's a necessity.  Hell, we put people on death row and execute them in full accordance to the laws that directly contradict the law that says murder is illegal.  We don't hold the judge and jury liable for that murder...

Again, I don't need to provide evidence of the lack of laws, just that the laws in place hurt those that blindly follow them.  People throw baby showers all of the time.  My girlfriend has dragged me to a few of them.  They're a real pain in the ass.  Yet, I understand the necessity.  Sure, they're fun for girls, but the reality of the situation is that the soon to be mother get's baby clothes, diapers, bottles, baby toys, baby furniture, strollers, and a bunch of other crap they'd not normally be able to afford if they didn't have one.  It also spares them the humility of having to ask their friends and family for help to get them set up to raise a child.  Therefor, if the law was obeyed fully, a lot more new parents would be having a much rougher start to their family.  Maybe even sink into poverty and never be able to climb out of it.  They are screwed by the law.  Photographers, most make a living off of exploiting children.  All of those nice family photos you got done as a kid...  Yup.  Your parents paid someone to do that didn't they.  If exploitation of children was followed to the letter, that photographer would be a penniless bum.  Taking pictures of your kids playing with other kids in the park would be illegal if you stood to gain anything from them.  Think of all of those memories you have saved up, you look at your pictures and you get all warm and fuzzy inside as your mind drifts off to those happy times.  Yep, you're a felon.  You either go to jail or let those memories fade away.  I'd be hurt if my mom couldn't take pictures of me when I was a kid and so would she.  I wouldn't have that sweet ass pic of me at 10 years old laying out to make a diving catch in center field to encourage me to keep playing all the way through college which helped me to get a scholarship which eased the financial burden on us both, mostly me since I went to a nice college and paid for most of it myself.  If child exploitation laws were followed to their fullest, my mom would be in the poor house having helped to send 3 of her 4 kids off to college.  And we'd be in the poor house because the colleges we did go to wouldn't have been as good as the ones we did get to go to because of scholarships.

Again there currently is no law prohibiting this so all you need to do is enjoy your life because you're already in this situation.  If there was a law, you's see companies being sued for murder, not wrongful death.  There are laws in place to encourage safe practices, there are rules in place to ensure quality, there are even fines for not following the guidelines, yet to date, there is no such law on the books that says you cannot sell poisoned food.  Why?  Because it is impossible to test every consumable piece of food or drink seconds before you consume it to ensure it's not poisonous.  It's just not possible to do so.  In fact, even if they did, everything that had preservatives in it or grew in a farm where pesticides were used would all come back as poisonous.  Not lethal, but poisonous none the less...  And even when you do consume a lethal dosage of something, you can't hold the seller responsible criminally because there currently is no such law, anywhere.  Can I just say, for someone who appears to be a stickler for wording, you sure do suck at it?  No?  Okay then, just thought I'd ask.

That is exactly my point.  You say my statement is absolute, actually you said my opinion is absolute but you failed to recognize that laws are absolute and when we allow circumstances to impede, muddle, or prohibit, their application fully, even garner praise when we blatantly disregard them, we prove they only hurt those that follow them in the first place.  If at any point a law abiding citizen is hurt by the law, then I am right.  Therefor, all laws only hurt the law abiding.  Everybody else just ignores them and does as they damned well please anyway.  Here's gun control, I can't buy a gun or if I do, I need to go on a waiting list to be approved to be able to buy one, register it with law enforcement once I am approved and buy it, get a permit to have it at my house from law enforcement, and get it taken away should I do something crazy like keep it in it's box when I try to take it home because I failed to put in for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, which would be denied in most places if you're not a cop or security person.  Yet that little gang banging drug dealer who threatened my life causing me to want to own a gun in the first place walks down the street and buys one off of some guy for $40 no questions asked...  And even if I get my gun before he tries something, I'm bound by the laws to not shoot him dead when he runs in my house trying to make good on his threat.  I'm now dead.  I'm the law abider and I'm dead, not the criminal.  If I had the gun or not, the guy who disregards all of the laws he's broken walks away to live another day and I'm dead on the floor.  If I wasn't so law abiding, I'd not be dead.  The law only hurts the law abiding, if you can't see that, then you need some serious help.

Now I know that's a long block of text, but apparently you need it because you're fixated on something that wasn't even the point of the damned original post in the first place.  That was that DRM only affects those who allow it to affect them.  The rest of the world that hates it finds ways to get rid of it and enjoy their game just as much as the person who just accepts it.  So get over your fixation because you're wrong, I've proven as much repeatedly, and I will not let you win.

Okay, tell me again, what kind of 'physical property' do you 'buy' from Steam, Impulse or GoG?

Oh, did you miss that court case when federal judje stated exactly what I said? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc.#Ninth_Circuit.27s_Analysis

Only, being an absolute, is okay with all laws because laws are absolutes themselves.

We are all affected by laws, no doubt, but the criminal, caught or not, shrugs off the law and therefor accepts the punishment if they get caught.  They're not hurt by the law because they decided to actively go against it, accepting the punishment that comes with getting caught.  The law is only hurtful to those that obey them.  If you do everything right in full accordance to the letter of the laws (which no one ever does because we view situations as shades of gray not black and white like the laws themselves are wrote) you get screwed.  We'd get along in real life quite well.  Your post made me laugh pretty good.  =]

  for entertaining the crap out of me for an evening.  ;]

This was actually a very dangerous ruling, essentially gutting all consumer protection. 

Copyright works by giving the copyright owner special rights over the work, but many of these rights become "exhausted" when they sell a copy.  The owner of that copy still cannot make copies and resell them, but otherwise retains full ownership and title of the purchased copy.  What some companies are trying to do is override the law by creating a new class of transaction called a "license" which is exactly like a sale except that it isn't a sale (for no other reason than because they said so).  Psychoak similarly points out that the transaction takes place before the contract is presented, and I'd agree with him that it should be completely uneforceable as a result.  I'm frankly disturbed that a judge upheld these notions, because consumers have essentially no recourse against this sort of bullying except to choose not to be consumers at all.  In today's increasingly software-driven world, that basically leaves you using open-source software which may or may not be reliable for your needs depending on what is available. 

The prior precedent was to examine the actual nature of the transaction.  The original court decision held that the transaction met all the definitions of a sale, hence it was a sale.  This new ruling says that a sale may or may not be a sale depending on a vague set of circumstances and the exact wording of the contract contained within... needless to say, this is going to be a legal quagmire going forward.

Um, no.  The arguments were extensively in direct conflict with your statements.

The copyright goon squad argued, in a rather prolific fashion, that the ability to resell in general, not just a used copy, was a violation of their rights.  There are plenty of stated reasons in the wiki article linked, chief among them is the multi-tiered distribution method commonly used by software with educational use as well as commercial.

If they charge students one price, and developers another, they need those poor licensing agreements to be enforced!  It's an epic fuck up of a ruling, which makes sense as it came from the ninth.

Yes, the arguments were, but the rulings were not.  What's more important?  The argument or the ruling?

You cite the ninth circuit court's analysis commentary as a ruling?  Try citing the actual rulings.  To both of you: Vernor sued Autodesk for blocking his sales, the district court ruled in 2008 in favor of Vernor that he owned the software and was not a licensee since he had not seen, nor accepted the EULA which would make him a licensee.  So he was to be treated as an owner.

The section you link to DKL and cite from is merely a commentary from the circuit court used to kick the case back to the district court saying they needed to do more work on it.

The district court again ruled in Vernor's favor in 2009 via denying Autodesk's motion to dismiss because Autodesk distributed copies of its software in transactions that, despite the inclusion of a restrictive license agreement, were best characterized as sales of the copies, giving rise to a right to redistribute those copies under the first-sale doctrine.

Both district court rulings support my comments that as long as I don't see or agree to the EULA, I am an owner and not a licensee and protected as a first seller.  Though I do agree that Autodesk is right in claiming that CTA agreed to be the license holder upon install and therefor should have never sold it, and that all future sales of that copy should be considered illegal, which should lead to litigation against CTA for that violation, including refunding Vernor his money back and reclaiming his licensed copy.  But since that's not what that particular case is about, it leads to the appeal in the circuit court...

Vernor ultimately loses last month in the circuit courts after they take over the appeal after the second decision in his favor in 2009, citing their earlier ruling in the Wall and MAI trio cases as a basis for their findings, and states that congress can change it should they feel compelled to even though congress already did feel compelled to and changed their MAI ruling.  So as a result they are citing precedence for their findings, yet not obeying the rulings congress handed down to them.  Go figure. 

Much like the article concludes with without actually saying it, there's going to be a lot more litigation because the ninth circuit court can't get it's shit together and lay down a clear ruling that doesn't contradict itself in the process of making that ruling, or something to that effect.

Generally, when one sues, their arguments would be why they sued.  If you're going to say he only got sued because it was used, you're in conflict with their own stated grounds for the suit, broadly encompassing grounds that covered reselling it even while still shrink wrapped.

Everyone give a slow clap to the law/policy that states when we buy a game, we don't actually own it. We own the right to play it, which means the developers can restrict those who paid£30+ for it to one install or whatever else they want.

Especially odd because piracy will never be stopped, so many security mesaures inhibit or even deny the paying, law-abiding types.

Football Manager had the right idea by using a trick where all pirated games had the teams that finished bottom in qualifiers end up in the world cup, ruining the experience. But then they changed it to Steam and DRM. It ended very, very badly...

buy the game, then crack it. problem solved. been doing that for years, as the DRM gets constantly more and more annoying.

Not buying it isn't going to stop the DRM from happening, and why should we be denied fun times because of companies like EA? You're basically saying "instead of having trouble playing the game legally, you should not buy it at all and never get to play it!"

Because a lot of people can't really get into all that cracking malarkey.

Spore didn't kill DRMs.