If you don't want to give money to EA...
Then don't play the game. That's not an excuse for piracy.
56 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Dec 2007
"They can go after Torrents all they want. More advanced technology is around the corner. Nothing fuels innovation like oppression."
Trying to keep you from stealing my stuff is not oppression.
I work in the video games industry, PC games specifically. If you steal one of my games instead of buying it, that literally takes money away from me. Don't give me that try-before-you-buy bullshit argument. It's up to me if I want you to be able to try my game before you pay for it. That's called a demo. Download it. Like it? Buy my game.
No, each download does not equal a lost sale. But anyone who thinks that illegal downloads do not have an equivalent in lost sales is dreaming. How many lost sales because of downloading is too many? One. Yep, if you're an employee at a small development studio, every sale counts.
"The students demonstrated good faith by contacting the MBTA, furthermore they intended to hold back some vital details of the hack from thier defcon presentation to give the MBTA some breathing room."
The students were all Chinese midgets originally born on the Isle of Man. -- See, I can make stuff up too.
"If you're unable to seed, it harms the operation of the program (it may keep "running well" for downloads, but if your goal is to distribute something that's little comfort)"
From Comcast's terms of service: "You agree not to use HSI for operation as an Internet service provider, a server site for ftp, telnet, rlogin, e-mail hosting, “Web hosting” or other similar applications"
I hereby suggest that seeding a torrent falls into the category of "other similar applications". It may cause harm to your seeding activities, but those activities are prohibited under the terms of service you agreed to when you signed up for Comcast's service.
You want to seed torrents? Go find an ISP that specifically allows it, like Speakeasy or buy a fractional T1. It's more expensive, but if you want to serve content, expect to pay for it.
"So, Chris, how do they know illegal filesharing is going on? There's plenty of legal filesharing."
Reading comprehension for the win. The intellectual property holder (or whoever their designated rep is) connects to a tracker for a torrent that is passing out their intellectual property. The IP holder gets a list of the IP addresses in the torrent and then contacts the ISPs of those users.
How is this hard to understand? There is no packet inspection necessary. All they have to do is go to a popular torrent search engine and start looking.
Of course they need to make sure that the content being passed around is actually their protected content.
It doesn't matter what they do, they will never win in the EU. They come into compliance and get fined again anyway. Nice. I think it's time for Microsoft to just stop doing business in the EU. Fuck 'em. Linux is so awesome that there should be no problem in changing every PC that currently runs Windows into a Linux box.
"that the "certain states" here in the United States that restrict the sale of adult beverages are generally the butt of every hick joke."
What, you mean the vast majority of them? I can't think of any state that doesn't restrict the sale of alcohol somehow. Except maybe Texas where you have drive thru liquor and ammo stores...
Anyway, in North Carolina everything is directly controlled by the state. You can only buy hard liquor at state run stores, and they enforce a monopoly on everything. That means if a particular beer isn't on the "state approved" list then you can't buy it anywhere, because there's no assigned distributor. It means we pay way more for our drinks than Georgia (I've lived there as well).
Don't even get me started on South Carolina, where you can only get hard liquor in mini bottles. Try getting a long island iced tea there...
"While I'm on the subject, what the hell's wrong with America? I went there once and every retailer advertises their merchandise at prices exclusive of tax."
Because that's how things are done over here. And people accuse Americans of being the ugly tourists...
"Federal Income Tax - pays for the operations of Fed Govt, especially military and Medicare (retiree health), and interest on funds borrowed to cover deficit spending."
Er, I thought the Medicare tax paid for Medicare. I'm sure some of my fed taxes go to Medicare but I swear there was a line item for Medicare...
"Waaah! I don't want to pay taxes." [paraphrased]
Then move to Nevada or New Hampshire.
"If it's not illegal to copy to your mp3 player, or to burn to disc an extra copy for your own personal use, why kick up so much over downloading in the first place? I'd bet that the majority of downloaders do so for personal use."
Yeah, that's right. The vast majority of music downloaders are downloading music that they already own. They just want to get their electronic copy from some random stranger on the Intertubes instead of ripping their own.
Damn straight. If Apple only wants to sell the phone on their insane terms that's their business. We don't have to Obey The Jobs!
I for one would rather buy something that does the job I need it to do without hacking or re purposing. If that means you're suck with some slaptard carrier and contract that you don't want to use, then don't buy the phone. Pretty simple.
If BMW wouldn't sell me a car without signing a contract that said I'd only put gas from Exxon in it, I'd laugh and them a buy a different car. (Not that I'd ever buy a BMW anyway, and I'm not so shallow that I have to tell the world the brand names of the products I own.)
If you sign the contract, you deal with it. No sympathy from me.