Rent-a-Game

Mwongozi writes: "British broadband users can now rent computer games to see if they are any good before they lay out the cash to buy the full game. This week, BT Openworld revealed details of its Software To Go scheme which lets people rent software by the hour, day or week. This includes games, graphics packages, educational titles and even programs that let you design your garden."

Comments

Potential threat to free speech

[All Dead Homiez]

These "software rental" schemes are really starting to worry me. Why? Because this is what inevitably happens:

Some company (MS, DIVX, BT Openworld, etc.) launches their rental product.

Some 16-year old somewhere in the world, who realizes that if the code can execute on the user's box, the user can save a copy, finds a way to crack the piracy protection and uploads the crack to his favorite FTP site

A bunch of freeloaders all over the U.S. start using the crack and getting the software for free

The company gets pissed off and uses the DMCA to squelch distribution of the crack's source code

The users get pissed off and distribute the code even more

Some hard-ass conservative judge decides that the best way to stop the piracy is to butcher the First Amendment

And now, source code is no longer considered protected speech

It's not the vendors' fault for deploying these schemes, but the damage to our civil liberties that inevitably results is immense.

-all dead homiez