The Lik-Sang Saga Continues

The sage of Lik-Sang has continued with Dan Gillmor's recent visit to the region. He and Alex Kampl met and talked for a while. The comparasions are good ones - and ones that are clearly enough drawn that everyone should see the loss of their rights.

Comments

Licensing has gone too far.

[altgrr]

Everywhere we look, all we can see is licensing. Regardless of whether the product be a tangible item (such as a games console), or a service (your phone connection, a piece of software), there are license agreements telling you what you may and may not do with it.

Is there going to come a point where we will not actually own anything, merely own a license to use it? Do we really want to owe our souls to the capitalist companies we work for?

Perhaps I'm exaggerating here, but I think it's a future that, currently, is coming for us, and one that I certainly don't want to live in.

Re:Licensing has gone too far.

[sql*kitten]

Is there going to come a point where we will not actually own anything, merely own a license to use it? Do we really want to owe our souls to the capitalist companies we work for?

I don't see how you get from the first sentence to the second, but that's beside the point for now.

Owning a license is better than owning the real thing, if it's done properly. Think about it. If you lose your bank card, does that mean you've also lost the money in your account? No, because your account is effectively your license, so its physical representation, the card, can easily be replaced.

If you buy a license to a piece of music, then wouldn't it be great if you could trade in your cassette or LP for a SACD or DVD-Audio for just the cost of duplicating the media? Or if you owned a game for PC, you could also get a Mac version for a negligible charge, because what you own is not the CD it came on, but the right to play the game? That's how licensing could and should work.

money?

[in_ur_face]

"The issue is front and center in an obscure but important legal battle under way in Hong Kong. The three major video-game console makers -- Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft -- have used the courts against a seller of hardware modification chips, often called ``mod chips,'' that give the boxes more capabilities than the makers allow when sold off the shelf."

I wonder how the amount of money spent on legal fees compares to the $$ lost from just allowing mod chips? Is this just a principle thing?

Re:money?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"I wonder how the amount of money spent on legal fees compares to the $$ lost from just allowing mod chips? Is this just a principle thing?"

They're pretty much forced to enforce their rights, or risk losing them. If Nintendo were to find that 1 million games shipped and 10 million people have a copy, they wouldn't be able to sue anybody if they just allowed it to happen.

I don't see why they're so afraid, though. The PC has no 'mod chips' to speak of. Yet, the game market on the PC isn't dying due to piracy. It's dying due to lack of interesting games.

One thing that could push me towards modding a GameCube (assuming that is possible, no idea if it is or not) so that I can play downloaded games is that I can't find game demos anywhere for the system. PS2 and XBOX have this, but Nintendon't.

I'd find modding the PS2 or the XBOX to be quite worthless as long as I had demos of games to try out.

Make the Xbox mods *clearly* for Linux use

[Morgaine]

A lot of these prosecutions seem to hinge on a modification being marketed in a fashion that leaves its intended purpose open to interpretation.

While lawyers will of course always oil the wheels of litigatation regardless of commonsense, morality, ethics, or the laws of physics, one should at least make it a little bit harder for them wherever possible.

For example, in the case of the Xbox mod chip, if a company created and marketed a device with the single and sole purpose of allowing Linux to be booted natively on powerup, and supported this purpose with Xbox Linux distros on its website plus all the relevant FAQs, and with extra features in the bootstrap making the purpose plain (eg. kernel boot parameter storage) as well as displaying a prominent intended-use disclaimer, this would make litigating against the company significantly harder than at present.

Re:Make the Xbox mods *clearly* for Linux use

[NormalVisual]

Ever wonder why you can't buy those handy lock jimmys the cops use? They can be marketed as an alternative method fo ropening your car when you have a brain fart and lock the keys inside it.

Actually, slim jims and similar tools are legally available in Florida and in several other states in the US. I'm not suggesting that mod chips are mostly used for legitimate purposes because I've not seen any data one way or the other, but I take umbrage at a company dictating to me exactly how I may use the product that I spent hundreds of dollars for. It's not cost effective to use an Xbox for running Linux, but I should still be able to if I want, and if I have a bunch of legitimately purchased Japanese anime DVDs I don't feel it's up to an American entertainment cartel to tell me I can't watch them on my DVD player.

I'm in the market

[visualight]

for a mod chip for my xbox.

I want to get a mod chip bought I'm still wary of buying things from online retailers. You'd think that if CompUSA sold them they'd sell one with every Xbox sold. If I had a store I'd do it. I don't see how MS could argue the premise "If I buy hardware I get to do whatever I want with it."

I wish someone in the states would do it, just so they could subpeona Bill Gates in court. "Say Bill, is it okay if I lock my xbox in the closet and never take it out? Well what if I hit it a few times with a 3 lb. sledge? Can I put wheels on it and ride it on the sidewalk? Are you saying that it should be illegal to run Linux on an Xbox? What's that? Linux should be illegal?

Re:Double standards?

[aronc]

Actually, it's rather easy. In one case you are being granted rights that you otherwise wouldn't have. That's the GPL. It's like saying I'll give you free reign in my house if you promise to clean up after yourself. You come in and don't clean I have the right to bitch.

The other case has companies trying to artificially remove rights that you already have under current law, that being the right to use something you've purchased however you see fit. That includes breaking out the soldier and a flash-rom you bought and having fun.

To summerise - I give you extra rights with some conditions and you break them == justified bitching. You try to take away rights I already have == justified bitching.

Car analogy extended: nationality of passengers

[Morgaine]

The analogy given in the article of a car manufacturer dictating where the car may be repaired is fairly good, but maybe this analogy would be even better.

The primary purpose of a DVD player or a DVD/CD-based games console is to play media. The primary purpose of a car is to transport passengers.

Consider then the uproar that would be caused if a US car manufacturer only allowed US nationals to be transported in its cars, only Japanese nationals in Japanese-manufactured cars, and so on. That is the direct counterpart to DVD and game regionalization. It's wrong, regardless of the economic reasoning behind it.