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Sega Pushes ISONews, and They Push Back
ttol writes "Take a look at our announcement at iSONews.com. Sega of America is trying to censor our freedom of speech by claiming our news service infringes on their copyrights on their Dreamcast system. We've got Ms. Jennifer Stisa Granick representing us (she spoke at DefCon). Sega has been sending out these notices for to other sites as well. It's time that someone can stand up for our constitutionary rights, and not let Big Business bully us around." ISO News doesn't distribute ISOs, so Sega is being very uncool. I think they're just pissed that only like 9 people bought dreamcasts *grin*.
It's an old observation that important rights cases always involve shady characters. When the rights of sweet, old grandmothers are threatened, it's just not a tough call. The difficult, and therefore important, calls involve characters like Ernesto Miranda, who was arrested for kidnapping and raping a slightly retarded 18-year-old woman.
So to address your question: is this really a case of free speech? Absolutely. The fact that the speakers are associated with low-grade lawbreaking does not in any way detract from the vastly more important free speech issue. Perhaps you've taken your eyes off the ball?
Here is an at least semi-accurate analogy.
Bob is a homosexual man living in san fransisco, for a living he makes and sells homemade jams and fruit perserves. He is also very successful, selling tons of jams and also becoming very famious.
One day on one of his many trips to buy bob's jams a young jamacian man named Stan thinks to himself "if only i dident have to dish out 50 bucks for each jam, what if i bought the jams and reverse engeered them so i could make them for my self and give bobs secret recipes to my friends for free, after all bob is just a money hungry bastard anyway charging 50 bucks for each jam, what an asshole". And so Stan buys a few of his favorite jams from bob, takes them home and gets to work at figuring out what went into these jams.
After weeks of hard work Stan breaks bob's secret recipe for strawberry jam and after a few more days discovers that almost all his jams include the same basic ingrediants. He quickly sends the
recipe along with this information to a few of his closest friends, so they too will no longer need to pay bob's outragious prices.
Months pass and while Bob is still doing very well he notices that some of his key customers are no longer showing up to buy his jam. He ponders this and reasons that either someone has cracked his secret recipe or someone is making an even better jam, but Lance wasent supposed to come out with his new jams for at least six months.
So Bob gets busy searching the internet and finds www.latestbobsjams.com with all the latest info on which of his jam's recipes have been discovered but does not include the actual recipes. Bob is infuriated and runs downtown to talk to his lawyer who says that Bob most likely wouldent win a court case against joe, (the admin of www.latestbobsjams.com) but a scare tactic would most likely work.
So off goes the email to Joe. And a few days later www.latestbobsjams.com goes down. Bob is delighted and ignorantly thinks that now no one will give out his secret recipes out of fear. But he is sadly mistaken because only a week later he finds out about www.jamplanet.com which not only lists the latest progress in the discovery of Bob's recipes it also lists the latest of his two good friends Steve and Larry as well. Along with at least twenty other people he dosent know.
Bob tries sending out a threatening email to www.jamplanet.com assuming that it will work because it worked with www.latestbobsjams.com. Fred (the admin of www.jamplanet.com) briefly takes only Bob's listings off the site only to consult his lawyer. With his lawyers ok Fred puts back up the Bob section on his site. This was Bob's greatest fear, the scare tactic dident work
and now everyone would know when each of his jams was reverse engeered.
Bob runs to his lawyer and begs him to do something. Bob's lawyer informs him that in court they would most likely lose but that a lawsuit could either scare them off or consume all of there money.
And thats where we sit today.
Ok, Maybe i went a little overboard.
Why do lawyers have to be such evil p***ies? One would assume they know the law and would abide by it, but I've never seen one that didn't dance around the law or simple ignore it "for the moment". Mr. Harris is a good example of this behavior. I'm sure he knows the law, however, he continues to threaten and harass iSONEWS. Sega has it in their craw to close down iSONEWS's Dreamcast section; who cares about the law, they have lots of money.
As with every case of "copyright infringement", every company's lawyers spew their harassing, veiled threats without offering one *damnned* example of *actual* infringement. iSONEWS is only guilty of indirect infringement if they take no action once they *know* direct infringement is occuring. Mr. Harris/Sega hasn't pointed out anyting. In fact, they've got their work ahead of them if they want to prove the "past" part of "past and current" violations. (If iSONEWS removed them, then they have complied with the law - PERIOD.)
"We know you're breaking the law, so play nice and tell us which ones."
Um, yeah...
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Question: is it really a case of "free speech"?
Yes, it is a case of free speech. As far as I can tell, ISONews does not distribute any illegal games themserlves. They simply report on what's out there. This is not and should not be a crime. If someone comes up to me on the street and asks if I know where he might find some crack and I tell him that the crackhouse down the street might be a good place to start should I be arrested as a drug dealer?
Warez fascinates me I guess, because people that wouldn't steal anything material - ie wouldn't walk into a shop and steal one of these games, feel totally justified in downloading them.
Agreed.
don't want to start a fight, I'd just really like to see some other opinions on this. Is it ethical?
It may not be ethical but "ethical" and "legal" are two very different things.
Once we start handing over our speech rights to lawyers where would it stop. I don't pirate software, but I do frequents the boards. The VCD board is one of the few places I can even ask encoding related questions and expect to get an answer. The boards are heavly moderated, and requests, trading, whatever is not allowed.
ISONews may be pussing the limits of good taste, but in not way are they doing anything illegal. Like they said, you must show what parts are infringing. Frankley after reading the letters, it appears more like harrasment than anything else.
You must ask yourself, before damming ISOnews, what if it were YOUR site. You were doing noting you thought was illegal, and they threaten you with vauge refrences to what you are doing wrong. They tell you that litigation will be long and agrivatitig. They force you to retain leagl advice and respond to letters that do not conform to the laws they are refrencing. You know the lawsuit is baseless, but how do you fight a company like sega? What would you do?
Everytime they bully a site down without just cause, and everyone that caves is sending the wrong message. They are saing that it's ok for coperations to strong arm the little guy for their own benifit, and the first amendment means noting. I'm starting to question wether or not any of out bill of right are really still enforcable, as now there are so many laws in place to restrict them, and I'm not just talking about free speach.
Sega's by far the coolest game company when it comes to emulation - they've only shut down ROM sites and left news and emulators alone. Contrast with Sony and Nintendo, who claim the emulators themselves are illegal and have lawyers to try and prove it. Remember that when Sega found out about KGen, their reaction was to pay Steve Snake a buttload of money to make an enhanced Win9x version for their Sega Smash Packs on the PC. Contrast with Sony's reaction to bleem!/VGS, or Nintendo's reaction to UltraHLE and I think you'll realize Sega is actually very cool about emulation.
Hm, didn't we just hear about a certain bill that got voted down?
But let's continue.
or an even better analogy: what if there was a site like stolengoods.com, where you see the booties of recent robberies, again with the message boards etc. how would you feel if you had been robbed and you saw your stuff traded on the site ? I bet you'd get pissed, wouldn't you ?
These people would have to put up contact info, wouldn't they? And it's better than seeing my stuff in a pawnshop.
(Yeah.... Give a strained analogy, get a strained response.)
Like I said, I am all for free speech,
Yeah, yeah, who doesn't say they are?
But, really: "Ok, everybody can speak. I mean, the people saying things that don't offend me too badly can speak. I mean -- hey! YOU! Shut up!"
but these sites IMHO are crossing the line: there is no reason for a law abiding citizen, somebody that doesn't pirate games, to go on these sites, and there is no reason for these sites to exist besides helping piracy and making money off it (via banner ads etc.).
There is NO REASON for the common citizen to know how to make a nuclear weapon. There is NO REASON for the common citizen to know how to make drugs. There is NO REASON for the common citizen to know how to build a bomb. There is NO REASON for the common citizen to own a gun. There is NO REASON for the common citizen to own drug-related paraphenalia. There is NO REASON
Free speech is a right, but helping people commit crimes is not a right.
Let's see. "This ISO was just released."
That statement does not infringe any copyrights or trademarks.
It is not obscene.
It is not libelous or slanderous.
It is not an incitement to violence.
Have I missed anything?
No. It reeks a lot of trying to be clever. You decide whether it succeeded. (But, really, WHO CARES?)
Bruce
Bruce
You are the real Bruce Perens.
(2) We can change the product license/EULA at anytime and that is always legally binding on you, with or without your consent. Even if you're a minor.
(3) Software piracy is "theft" and a loss for our company everywhere except in our annual financial report (where the SEC requires public US traded companies to disclose all profits, expenditures, LOSSES, etc.)
(4) Negative reviews of our products are illegal, as this may result in financial losses. Also, the reviewer is financially responsible for any such losses he/she causes.
(5) Since we always own our product, we can use it to covertly spy on you, collect personal data, and secretly send it back to corporate HQ. Blocking this action in any way is also illegal.
(6) US law is world law, thanks to UN treaties which preempt the US constitution (See Article VI, ection 2), and other nations' constitutions. Non-compliant nations will be carpet bombed into submission (Yugoslovia, Iraq, etc.)
(7) Exemptions for archival backups, reverse engineering, security analysis, transfer of license, reliabiliy testing, etc., no longer applies to our products (see the DMCA).
(8) Even when we're wrong. We win the lawsuits. You are a mere peon. We have an army of lawyers and a mega-dollar legal budget and years to decades of time on our hands to sue and delay and filibuster you into litigation hell. Can you afford to "win"? You'll go bankrupt, your wife and kids leave you, and die a bum on the streets, of starvation, long before that happens. God bless the US legal system. And when we do win (rightfully or wrongfilly [in your opinion]), the win builds up case law in our favor to make us stronger against the next punk.
(9) Copyrights never expire. They never will ever again. Just get over your dreams of eventual intellectual property theft. We'll be working on patents, next.
(10) We reserve the right to make deletions, additions, or changes to this Bill of Rights at any time and any such alterations are retroactively effective from infinity B.C. to infinity C.E.
Quietly encouraging piracy of your products in these markets makes perfect sense.
Interesting theory, but unfortunately false. I've just returned to the US after three years in China. Microsoft has a team of lawyers and investigators working full time cracking down on piracy--with more sucess than most. Indeed, they're by far the most agressive anti-piracy bunch in the region, doing a lot more than other manufacturers of frequently-pirated stuff, like Polo shirts, Rolex watches and Hello Kitty.
Slashdot has about ten thousand readers. No more, no less. The rest of the user accounts are simply those made by the trolls and other kiddies who live on the website, reloading the front page every fifteen seconds who need multiple usernames in order to carry out long, detailed conversations with themselves. Don't underestimate those ten thousand, even if they are a much smaller number than one expects, given the 250k user accounts.
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
I don't know why the Dreamcast always gets such a bum wrap... They've been on the market for over a year now, while the PS2 isn't even in the US market yet, but even a year ago people were saying they didn't want to spend 200 bucks for the best system out at the time because the PS2 would beat it when it came out.
Besides, Sega tries stuff in the states that there's no way Sony would even think of doing... Seaman, for instance, is an awesome "game" that does some truly innovative stuff that sega took a chance with and released in the states.
Anyway, I'm not a huge console gamer, but if any next-gen console survives, I hope it's Sega's.
--
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
The premiere 'news' site for the piracy scene finally gets a letter from Sega.
It's %100 true that ISONEWS does not distribute images of games, but the difference here is that ISONEWS reports news of groups releases of games.
They send out their own 'press releases' if you will that state they have released the latest game.
The question is: what is legal, or illegal about these 'press releases' (otherwise known as NFO files).
If these NFO files can be found as not breaking any laws: then sega has no case, otherwise, isonews has a bit of a problem.
I don't recall remembering anyone that has successfully been litigated upon for having mere NFO files.
Come on guys
/. is not a traditional news site, but a snide remark like so Sega is being very uncool. I think they're just pissed that only like 9 people bought dreamcasts *grin* reeks a lot of Sony fanboy-ism...
let's use an analogy to real life: what if you had a site like drugnews.com, that tells you everything about the newest drugs released, their latest effects, and maybe has a forum with various people who know how to get those drugs and whom you can email etc.
or an even better analogy: what if there was a site like stolengoods.com, where you see the booties of recent robberies, again with the message boards etc. how would you feel if you had been robbed and you saw your stuff traded on the site ? I bet you'd get pissed, wouldn't you ?
Like I said, I am all for free speech, but these sites IMHO are crossing the line: there is no reason for a law abiding citizen, somebody that doesn't pirate games, to go on these sites, and there is no reason for these sites to exist besides helping piracy and making money off it (via banner ads etc.).
Free speech is a right, but helping people commit crimes is not a right.
I am also appalled at the quality of the post, I mean, I know that
-- the cake is a lie
Sega sends letters to everyone and their grandmother who has "sega" and "download" in the same HTML code.
Many EMU sites have been sent similar letters.. so really this should come as no suprise to anyone following sega and their paths of litigation.
>>..so Sega is being very uncool... "Sega... man... you've changed! you used to be cool! Now your trying to shutdown a site dedicated to giving information on stealing your games! You've changed man... you've changed". Look, if Sega's uncool, its for the Sege-Cd, 32X, and all that other garbage they tricked me into buying :) Im quite happy with my dreamcast though :) What they are doing here is what any one of you would do if "stealbobsstuff.com" was open, and everytime you bought something, it was put on the site, and general info was given on how you could go about stealing it.
This reminds me of my former roommate that didn't want to buy a CD player because "something better was coming". This was in 1997.
CD players have improved quite a bit in the last few years. Most of the technology is in the form of digital-to-analog converters. If you think that they're all the same, try throwing a mid to high-end DAC in a system with a CD player more than a few years old (or even a cheap new one). It will make a believer out of you.
Of course, we *know* that better computers are coming out in a year. But if you keep waiting you'll never buy one. It's certainly a thin line to walk, and the concept works for most everything (cars, computers, stereos, TVs, golf clubs...).
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
* Pornography of any kind (need I provide examples ?)
:)
Has banning it ever stopped it? Some pornography actualy I believe provides a societal release valve, child pornography is obviously wrong, but again have we stopped it by saying it's evil and should be banned?
* Revisionism (The holocaust is a bunch of lies)
Sure, I also support Ken McVay's efforts to put together the largest collection of pro holocaust data in the world. The solution to problems involving freedom of speech is usually more freedom of speech, not less.
* Hate speech (Homosexuals should die)
See revisionist, often the same thing anyways
* Pro drugs speech (Drugging yourself is good )
have you turned on your TV lately? That's what 99% of TV seems to say.
* Blackmailing (If you don't do what I want I will tell about that interesting thing that happened in your company the other day)
Freedom of speech ends where it impacts on someone else's freedom. I wouldn't advocate freedom to yell fire in a crowded room, same reasons.
* Sexual harassment (need I provide examples ?)
See above. Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins
A note to bring this into prospective:
ISOnews has done none of the above. ISOnews simply said, "This stuff exists" and I'm willing to bet has been used by the BSA and law enforcment to gather evidence.
Similarly the CIL explosives handbook documents how to make a bomb. I've never seen it pulled from a libary cuz a mad bomber might use it.
----
Remove the rocks from my head to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
There were a couple of responses here that say things along the lines of "No honest citizen would need this information." Well, to them I say this: I hope you're all headed down to the police station to give your fingerprints, because no honest citizen would have an issue with that. And, while you're at it, please let me know who you're planning on voting for, because no honest person would mind sharing that information, or anything else. Every so-called freedom that exists, is there not just for the honest, but for the dishonest as well. If we play the 'only outlaws do X' game, we might as well abandon all of our freedoms.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
>and asks if I know where he might find some
>crack and I tell him that the crackhouse down
>the street might be a good place to start
>should I be arrested as a drug dealer?
I think, in this case, that my examples fit a little better than yours.
Back in May, just after I moved here, one of the local TV stations had a special on their nightly news profiling "San Francisco's biggest 'black market'".
Seems that there's a streach of road in SOMA that's notorious as a black market for damn near anything you'd care to buy. Drugs, hookers, stolen electronics, stolen jewelry, and DVDs (w/o regional encoding, and thus guaranteed to make the MPAA all pissy) imported from Hong Kong were a few of the items the news mentioned.
So, if *I* were to go down there to score a hit of X, would the TV station be responsible for *MY* actions???
In the Guardian's "Best of the Bay" list a few weeks back, one of the categories was "Best place to score weed if you're new to town and don't have a hookup yet".... they mentioned a certian park in Berkeley.
So, if *I* were to go over there to score a bag of weed, would the Guardian be responsible for *MY* actions???
In both cases, common sence AND morality would both say no....
But then, both corperations and the law are routinely immoral AND nonsenceical...
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
The PS seemed succesful before games were copyable. OTOH, I probably wouldn't have bought my Amiga were it not for the fact that I knew that I could pirate games from friends.
What I want to know is do the hardware vendors realise this? Sony and Sega put a lot of effort into preventing piracy. Of course they get money from sales and not from piracyy too, so its in their interests. Are there any examples of something that we can prove flourished through piracy?
1) Several sites figure out how to successfully copy GD-ROMs. Since this was a uniquish format Sega used in order to prevent piracy. Granted, these may not be news sites, but who actually makes backups of their CD-like medium games? I still haven't met the person.
2) This dissemination of knowledge is potentially very damaging to Sega. Unlike Napster, which many users use to sample music, and buy the CD, ISO copies are not very likely to "sample" the game they copy, and then run out and buy it for $50.
3) Since the sites aren't actually doing anything illegal themselves, the most sensible tactic from a business standpoint is to strong arm them. Cease and desist letters have been in practice by the IDSA and their clients for a while (remember that whole N64 emu deal?). Since it's unlikely any of these sites will be able to fund a competent defence, the most probably result is that the site is taken down.
Personally, I'm not crying. I do not support wholesale piracy, and you're just lying to yourself if you don't think that's what this is about. Sure, some first ammendment rights are getting trampled, but I think people need to learn to pay for things -- especially entertainment.
So let's all pretend to be suprised, and get it out of our system. Oh my! Big bad Sega's pooping on the first ammendment! Good heavens! There. I feel better now. Don't you?
-- ~Can money pay for all the days I've lived awake, but half asleep?~
Ah, therein lies the rub.
:)
To quote Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
The funny thing with Free Speech, you ethier have it or you don't. The minute you start saying, "Well this speech is OK, but that speech over there, that has to go", you open Pandora's box.
Personally there's a lot of stuff on TV or radio that I would rather not see. It all comes down to, what is one man's offensive trash, is another man's free speech, and simply because I believe that a certian site shouldn't exist (for whatever moral, legal, religous, or phil grounds) I have to respect their right to say it. Full stop. This is one of those things you can't do half way, lest you get book bannings, and all other sorts of bad karma stuff.
Like it or lump it, it's free speech
Minupla
----
Remove the rocks from my head to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Think about it... How do lawyers feed their kids?
.com chasing
20th Century: Ambulance chasing
21st Century:
It's just the latest easy-peasy way of lining their pockets. I bet they charge $100 per letter/e-mail!
Are there any examples of something that we can prove flourished through piracy?
Excellent question. There are plenty of examples of thing that flourished (ie, were made commercialy sucessful) though unpaid copying, such as Doom and other demoware, but that's different. The previous posters' examples of Windows and Office are clearly bogus. Piracy not why those two suceeded; indeed, most of the piracy is in the developing world (China, esp) and of foreign-language versions. How about Photoshop? That's got to be one of the most pirated apps out there.
The real answer, however, is that piracy helps PC sales, but doesn't do much for the software being pirated.
www.DupeCheck.com was a site that provided a similar service, but was focused on 0day (non iso) releases. It didn't have a message board, but allowed you to search through the archives to find when a particular game/application was released, plus the filenames.
Now, I don't know exactly what happened to DupeCheck, but my gut says that something simliar happened to them that is happening to iSONEWS. Does anybody know anything further?
------------
CitizenC
SEGA stock is down 75% from its peak early this year. They're losing money. And they don't have an entry in the next generation race: Sony has the PS2, Nintendo has the GameCube, and Microsoft has the X-Box. Sega? Well, Sega has a new GameBoy-like unit. Maybe they're moving to the handheld market.
So SEGA is sinking. One article on SEGA wrote "This company is dead", but it's too soon to tell.
A lot of comments about Sega strongarming an innocent news site.
:) ]
Would it be illegal to post a news site with the topic of... oh, how about Cmdr Taco's house: www.tacohome.com. There could be different sections, like:
Blueprints
Resident Traffic News *updated frequently*
Resident Traffic Patterns : daily
Security Analysis : 9/27
Invasion Scenarios : 9/29 (2 new)
Likely Valuables / Locations
Links
Of course, the links would be to stores that sell stuff that would be useful in a home invasion. Or online gun stores. Maybe simple HOWTOs on how to disable phone lines and other communication.
It's just freedom of speech, baby. I'm not doing anything wrong. You can't prosecute me.
Oh, but wait, that's different. Is there some area where I can be legally right, but morally wrong? How?
Because this situation isn't what the framers of the consititution had in mind. Big troop movement was horses, and guns had firing rates of one round per minute. Information traveled at horse-speed. Information travel was so slow and so deliberate that it took weeks for wars to end. No concept of fast information transfer... no idea that information transfer would become the center of the economy. I'm not saying they were unintelligent or wrong, they built the best system in the world, for it's time.
Stories like this are why I secretly pray for some kind of magical legal armageddon, so that we can start over and write relevant laws. Because our legal system is the best, it's the best in the world, but the laws under it are like a software architechture that's been hacked to work for over 200 years. The design is good, but you can hardly see through the spaghetti of maintenance.
So why talk about how ISOnews is legally right? Sure it is, and Sega is doing the legally wrong thing to go after the website. But why not talk about how what ISOnews is doing is morally wrong?
I mean, this isn't Cuecat and their dopey business strategy, and using lawyers to make money. This is theft, and someone "innocently" being the center of that community.
I know that arguing morals is a slippery slope, but man, I love my Dreamcast and it just pisses me off to see people stealing what is pretty much an awesome toy made by brilliant people.
[Sorry I singled out Taco, but he doesn't obviously know dreamcast sales from Slashdot's back end.
Nobody, I hope. But do you think it's right to prohibit fair use, due to fear of piracy? That's what copy protection and weird non-ISO CD formats do.
15 years from now, someone who bought these games are going to want to run them under an emulator. Having them stored in a standard format instead of a weird one that needs a special drive, is going to be useful. Therefore, it's ethical.
If Sega wants to combat piracy, then the first step would be to stop using weird formats and copy protection. Then they can do searches with a pretty high degree of confidence that whatever they find will be copyright infringement. Until then, they'll have no way of telling pirates and honest people apart, since the pirates and the honest people both need to use the same tools, information, etc. This results in goofy things like C&D letters being sent to ISONews.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
CmdrTaco you are quickly become very annoying. Have you even USED a Dreamcast? People like to play good games and the Dreamcast has been dishing them out for a long time and at a good price.
When you tack your lame comments on stories you show yourself to be a very petty person.
Why wait 18 months to get bascially the same thing - and pay more for it.
This reminds me of my former roommate that didn't want to buy a CD player because "something better was coming". This was in 1997.
Question: is it really a case of "free speech"? I mean it's all good and well to talk about people's rights etc, but honestly everyone knows this sort of thing is purely directed to game piracy. I'm really curious about this - how many people think that the piracy of games under the banner of "backups" is actually "right"?
Yes sure ISONews is just that - a news site, and I'm not going to argue semantics on whether or not sega is being heavy handed, other than proposing this: if you coded games for a living, to sell, and yes increase the value of your business, would you like people to post them where people could download them?
Warez fascinates me I guess, because people that wouldn't steal anything material - ie wouldn't walk into a shop and steal one of these games, feel totally justified in downloading them.
I don't want to start a fight, I'd just really like to see some other opinions on this. Is it ethical?
It looks like they are trying to stop people who are posting information on how to pirate DC games. Don't think they will be able to stop it but I can't blaim them for trying, pirating sucks!
,"only 9 people bought dreamcasts." Yes the DC isn't close to outselling the ps1 yet but older consoles always outsell the new ones for a couple of years. Last time I looked at the sales figures the DC was doing just fine for such a new console.
,etc.) and there are some awesome games on the way (Shenmue.) So what if the DC doesn't "win" it is a great console that is well worth the $150 price tag. I think the DC will do better against the other next generation consoles than people think. If it doesn't hopefully the industry has grown so much they can make money with only a small part of the market. Sega's marketing can leave something to be desired but NO ONE makes better games than Sega!!!
Why do people make jokes like
The fact of the matter is that the DC is inexpensive for a next generation console, it has TONS of great games (Seamen, Sega GT, NFL 2k, SC, Crazy Taxi, Get bass, house of the dead 2, Resident evil CV, power stone 1 and 2, sonic
And cmdrtaco, your ass is wrong on DC sales by over 6 million #'s. SO get off the PS2 bandwagon and give some stories that are truthfull instead of spitefull to your limited mindset.
Yes, slashdot is suckdot really bad right now. My viewership has gone from several times a day to once a week. Nothing worth noting. Linux is old news, patent infringements are passe and geezus christ, what are you defending with the Sega VS isonews.com
I should make a slashdotnews.com and setup programs that are illegal to send out but have news on how to view sites without legal signons, spam them and not get banner adds sent. But then again it wouldn't be illegal because i'm just talking about the software and not "technically" giving it to you.
Condone freedom of speech, don't condone illegal activities no matter how much it saves you money to waiste on whatever else material things people are so stuck up on.
PS2 Sucks, get a Sega DreamCast.
I'm certainly glad I don't have my own technology or intellectual property to defend, because the moment I tried to, this entire extremist community would attack me.
I see your point of view, so I assume you would also agree to the following forms of free speech without any restrictions of age or form (think spots on TV etc.)
* Pornography of any kind (need I provide examples ?)
* Revisionism (The holocaust is a bunch of lies)
* Hate speech (Homosexuals should die)
* Pro drugs speech (Drugging yourself is good )
* Blackmailing (If you don't do what I want I will tell about that interesting thing that happened in your company the other day)
* Sexual harassment (need I provide examples ?)
and so on, and so on.
From your line of reasoning it follows that in our society we do not have free speech, since the above mentioned things are regulated, and personally I'd like it to remain that way.
Free speech is a right unless it infringes on anybody else's rights I can utter sexist remarks all I want in my bathroom, but if I do it repeatedly in the workplace I can get charged with sexual harassment (and that's a good thing) because those sexist remarks infringe on my coworker's liberty of not feeling threatened.
Now we can discuss all day on which liberties deserve protection (a non smoker thinks that they have the right not to have smokers around, while a smoker thinks they have the right to smoke wherever they please) but IMHO free speech and regulated speech are not mutually exclusive.
-- the cake is a lie
Ok. So. Another friend of yours both bought a lock from toolshedlockshop.com and read the instructions on toolshedtheft.com. Only problem is, he doesn't know about the electrician's tape thing. So, he goes to break in to your next-door neighbor's toolshed, but doesn't tape up her pet poodle (obviously), so he gets bitten by the poodle as he's trying to climb the fence to get out of her yard. So the next day this friend comes to you with half a canteloupe and asks you where to get rabies shots. Considering that you've been wanting to sleep with your next door neighbor whose canteloupe he stole for months, but you hate her poodle, but also now know that you can make a killing in the electricians' tape market, do you tell your friend you still have five CD's and an old sweatshirt that he left at your house four months ago?
Bruce
Bruce
You are the real Bruce Perens.
Actually, the previous poster was half right. Most home users don't pay for Windows or Office. Well, maybe the cost of Windows is factored in the purchasing price of their pc, but buying a full-featured Office 2000 at USD 500? No way.
It kinda works both ways: as an employer, you're more likely to buy software your employees are already familiar with, and as an employee, you're more likely to "borrow" a cd from work, install the software and pass copies on to all of your friends. For this reason, WordPerfect never made a big stink about home users pirating their stuff left and right way back when, because they knew millions of businesses (who could hardly afford running the risk of using illegal copies) would buy licenses. It's free advertisement for them. No money gets lost (like I said, home users don't cough up USD 500 for some piece of software) and your user base grows like crazy.
I seriously doubt, though, that this is a sound business model for a console games. Not only are there no businesses that will buy millions of Metal Gear Solid licenses just because their employees know how to play it, but console manufacturers also sell their hardware at a loss, hoping to make up for it in software sales.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
It is not a consitutional issue. They are not a government organization. Your first ammendment rights do not mean squat because they do not exist in this case. Read the first and fourteen amendments for more information.
It's much easier, and cheaper, for a big company like Sega to have their lawyers send out threatening letters to everyone who 'might' be infringing on their rights. Why spend the time and effort finding the real 'bad guys' when 99% of the recipients of letters like this will cave in because they are either scared of the lawyers, or financially unable to battle them.
It all comes down to money after all. By using heavy handed tactics like this Sega can kill the most birds with one stone. I applaud ISONews for standing up for their, and everyone's, right.
MoTec
-nothing to see here... move along
If Isonews is really telling people where to download pirated DC games, then why isn't Sega going after the people running *those* web/ftp/whatever sites?
If Sega's claims were even halfway valid, they're barking up the wrong tree.