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Modding and the Law
S3D writes "An article at O'Reilly discusses modding as a cultural phenomenon and its relation to the law and authority. The conclusion is that social activists are modders too. They want to change the government into something that supports a productive society. They want institutions to stop hiding facts and to pay attention to science. They want to change corporations, change people's day-to-day behavior, and change our own social relationships."
Andy Oram offers interesting insights, and paradoxically offers as a solution, modding our government. Cool!
modding has always been around. Only recently has it become any phenomenon through greed of the manufactorer. Could you imagine buying a car, and then being sued for replacing the factory deck with a new one? Looks like some corporations seek to stop selling any goods to anyone and instead just want to lease out the use of their property. If they do it should be clearly printed on the box. If not, when you purchase it, it's YOURS to do whatever you damn well please to do with it.
*DrugCheese rants*
It is interesting to me that the main planks of the controlling interests were laid during the Clinton years:
The No Electronic Theft Act of 1997
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998
I guess we now know why Hollywood is so in bed with the Clintons. The established media companies, as usual, are fighting any trend that loosens their grip on us. Their latest ploy, the new TV program about a woman president, is just the latest transparent move (get us all used to the idea of Hillary in charge). Just think what onerous laws they will be able to pass once the Clintons get back into the White House!
I think modding and the related fanfiction (which can be considered as "add-ons" or even complete AUs to someone else's original creative work) derive from an even more basic impulse than to change the world. People like creating things, they like to tell stories, they like to make things. Most don't desire to be professional (at least initially) and maybe they don't have the talent. It is easier for you to tell stories/make new work based on what someone else has done as the universe/tools already exist. Also it helps you draw a larger audience as the audience is also familiar with the universe. I mean everyone when they were young after watching a particularly engrossing movie have made up stories in their heads how they were part of the Jedi or little plotlines about what happened after the end. Maybe you weren't entirely satisfied with some aspect of the movie/book/game and want to change it to suit yourself. All the internet does is allow something that previously would have been private gain an audience outside of your close friends and family. If you look at the rich cultural fabric of any society, you have stories that "grew" with each retelling as someone heard it in Village A, went back to Village B, embellish it a lot, and then someone in Village B went to Country C and changed it a bit to fit the local beliefs and maybe even mix it in with a preexisting story with a similar plotline. The idea of taking someone else's creative work or even a real story and using it for your own story that you tell someone else is one of the foundations of any country's creative fabric.
Also, when you think about it, isn't it healthier to have people, esp. young people sit around using their brains to create mods or write fanfiction (even if it turns out crap) than just sitting passively watching TV or playing games that someone else wrote? At least they are using their brains and doing something and trying to create something than just sitting there and passively taking what someone else is saying.
As a libertarian (small "l") political activist, the only thing on that list that fits with my personal activism is the part about wanting institutions to stop hiding facts and start paying attention to science.
Otherwise, many of us want to work toward a more individualist, rather than collectivist, society. Does that make us any less of "social activist modders"?
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
With my recent purchase of Battlefield 2 I recieved a full modding kit (which is also available online) including map editor and tutorials on how to use 3rd party programs. Thought to accomodate modding even goes into the development of the game: BF2 is scripted using Python, as many other games (the recent interview with the Civ4 dev team highlighted this: they used Python so the game could be extensively moddable.
Many games companies even put up with some blatant copyright infringment. I work on http://ta-mod.com/ which is a mod for the Battlefield Series of games, turning it into a Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun styled interface. Legally, EA could waltz in and shut us down for infringing their intellectual property on the C&C series, but they are fully aware of our activities and they seem to be quite enthusiastic about it.
The traditional industries can learn this lesson. If they bundled Rip/Mix/Burn programs with their music/movies just as PC Gamer developers do I would actually feel pushed to buy the content as the value added from something which you can add to infinitely over time is so much greater than a passive disk which you watch/listen to then put back. They would be adding value to their product, reaping a PR victory and not expending more than 20c per unit sold for a printed CD including the modding tools. If they don't include the tools, people will get them from somewhere else - it's a question of keeping their market.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Posts like these sometimes make me think the USA is some kind of third world country with a civil war waging. I never heard of a situation here in Germany where someone had to "defend their life or well-being". Sure there are some murders,... but most of those are commited by surprising the victim in a way that a weapon wouldn't be of any help (victim sleeping or clubbed from behind or trusting the murderer or something like that).
Linux is not Windows
Would it be okay to someone live in your basement without paying rent as long as you didn't know he was there and he caused you no harm? No.
Not all philosophers[1] agree with this assertion.
It's just impractical to sell the computer to your neighbor in order to sell him exclusive access to a file (which is what you would be selling if it were a paperback).
Difference is that a paperback doesn't suddenly acquire more works bound into it, unlike an Apple ID which is bound to every work purchased with that ID.
If you don't like the license or the DRM [in products of MPAA members or Microsoft Corporation], don't agree to it or don't use it.
What viable alternative is there?
"I've seen several movies that I thought I could improve on. All of this is illegal, and that's dynamite." But it's not illegal.
Say what?
I'm surprised the author didn't raise fair use here.
Because in most cases of public non-commercial use, the expected gain of a fair use defense is less than the money that would be spent defending it in court of law.
The problem is that a license is superior, producers cannot help but adopt it.
The problem is that the people who buy popular software have no way of negotiating those license contracts. There both are and should be limits on what a party with vastly superior financial resources can demand in such a contract of adhesion.
[1] Philosophers deal in morals. Lawyers deal in law.